Reserve Storage 




Qass. 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



AFTER-DINNER AND OTHER 
SPEECHES 



BY 



.^ 



JOHN D.^LONG 





QZT^i 



^CUl 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

W&i BitJetisitic ^xziiy Camliri&oe 

1895 



rv\ 



■i-'X^ 



Tt>^ 



Copyright, 1895, 
By JOHN D. LONG. 

All rights reserved. 



i 

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Ca 



These speeches^ made when I was in public life, 
may have some value as a partial reflection of 
the public sentiment, and of the topics and occo/- 
sions, of a generation hi Massachusetts, which 
is now more past than present, and to which, 
mindful of the kindnesses and opportunities it 
gave me, I gratefully inscribe them, 

Hingham, February 22, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Daniel Websteb 1 

Wendell Phillips 6 

Nomination of George F. Edmunds to the Presidenct . . 12 

Forefathers' Day in New York 17 

Senator Pike 27 

Unitarian Missionary Work 31 

The Ancient and Honorable Artillery 35 

Welcome to the American Association for the Advancement 

of Science 39 

Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Massachusetts Chari- 
table Mechanics' Building 42 

Opening of the New England Manufacturers' and Mechanics' 

Institute Fair 46 

Welcome to the National Conference of Charities . . 50 

Centennial Dinner of the Massachusetts Medical Society 54 
Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement 

OF Cambridge, Mass 58 

Oxford County, Maine 64 

Memorial Day 72 

The Disaster at Johnstown, Pa 86 

The Univbrsalists 89 

The Colored Veterans 94 

Commencement Dinner at Harvard College .... 97 
Opening of the Fair of the Society for the Prevention of 

Cruelty to Children 101 

General Grant 104 

General Sherman 107 

General Logan HO 

The National Druggists' Association 113 

Webster Centennial at Marshfield, Mass 117 

Mayor Prince 121 

Forefathers' Day at Plymouth, Mass 124 

The Old Sixth 127 



VI CONTENTS. 

Dedication of the Oakes Ames Memorial Building . . 131 

Longfellow 134 

The Old Meeting-House at Hingham, Mass 137 

Dedication of the Town Hall, Hopedale, Mass. . . 143 

President Garfield 152 

Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Incorpora- 
tion OF Sandwich, Mass 156 

The Spirit of 1775 161 

Dedication of the Wallace and Converse Library Buildings 179 

Governor Andrew 190 

Fourth of July Oration, Boston, 1882 196 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth, Marshfield Club, 
Parker House, Boston, January 18, 1882. 

It is but a poor tribute that even tbe most eloquent 
voice, least of all mine, can pay for Massachusetts to the 
memory of her mightiest man of state and her greatest 
orator. Among her sons he towers like the massive shaft 
on Bunker Hill, upon the base and crest of which his name 
is emblazoned clearer than if chiseled deep in its granite 
cubes. For years he was her synonym. Among the 
states he sustained her at that proud height which Win- 
throp and Sam Adams gave her in the colonial and pro- 
vincial days. With what matchless grandeur he defended 
her ! With what overwhelming power he impressed her 
convictions upon the national life ! God seems to appoint 
men to special work ; and, that done, the very effort of 
its achievement exhausts them, and they rise not again to 
the summit of their meridian. So it was with Webster. 
He knows little of written constitutions and frames of 
government who does not know that they exist less in 
the letter than in the interpretation and construction of 
the letter. In this light it is not too much to say that the 
constitution of the United States, as it existed when it 
sustained our country through the recent and greatest 
peril that ever tested it, and as it reflected the popular 
sense, was the crystallization of the mind of Webster. 
It came from its framers, and was accepted by some of 
our own, in New England, as a compact of states, sove- 



2 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

reign in all but certain enumerated powers delegated to a 
central government. He made it the crucible of a welded 
union, tbe charter of one great country, the United States 
of America. He made those states a nation and enfolded 
them in its single banner. It was the overwhelming logic 
of his discussion, the household familiarity of his simple 
but irresistible statement, that gave us munition with 
which to fight the war for the preservation of the union 
and the abolition of slavery. It was his eloquence, clear 
as crystal and precipitating itself in the schoolbooks and 
literature of a people, which had trained up the genera- 
tion of twenty-five years ago to regard this nation as one, 
to love its flag with a patriotism that knew no faction or 
section, to be loyal to the whole country, and to find in 
its constitution power to suppress any hand or combina- 
tion raised against it. The great rebellion of 1861 went 
down hardly more before the cannon of Grant and Far- 
ragut than the thunder of Webster's reply to Hayne. He 
knew not the extent of his own achievement. His great- 
est failure was that he rose not to the height and actual 
stroke of his own resistless argument, and that he lacked 
the sublimed inspiration, the disentanglement and the 
courage to let the giant he had created go upon his errand, 
first of force and then through that of surer peace. He had 
put the work and genius of more than an ordinary lifetime 
of service into the arching and knitting of the union, and 
this he could not bear to put to the final test. His great 
heart was sincere in the prayer that his eyes might not 
behold the earthquake that would shake it to those foun- 
dations, which, though he knew it not, he had made so 
strong that a succeeding generation saw them stand the 
shock as the oak withstands the storm. Men are not gods, 
and it needed in him that he should rise to a moral sub- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 3 

limity and daring as lofty as the intellectual heights above 
which he soared with unequaled strength. So had he 
been godlike. 

A great man touches the heart of the people as well as 
their intelligence. They not only admire, they also love 
him. It sometimes seems as if they sought in him some 
weakness of our common human nature, that they might 
chide him for it, then forgive it, and so endear him to them- 
selves the more. Massachusetts had her friction with the 
younger Adams only to lay him away with profounder 
honor, and to remember him devotedly as the defender of 
the right of petition and " the old man eloquent." She 
forgave the overweening conceit of Sumner ; she revoked 
her unjust censure of him, and now points her youth to 
him in his high niche as the unsullied patriot without 
fear and without reproach, who stood and spoke for equal 
rights, and whose last great service was to demand and 
enforce his country's just claims against the dishonorable 
trespass of the cruisers of that England he had so much 
admired. Massachusetts smote and broke the heart of 
Webster, her idol, and then broke her own above his 
grave, and to-day writes his name highest upon her roll of 
statesmen. It seems disjointed to say that, with such 
might as his, the impression that comes from his face upon 
the wall, as from his silhouette upon the background of 
our history, is that of sadness, — the sadness of the great 
deep eyes, the sadness of the lonely shore he loved, and 
by which he sleeps. But the story of Webster from the 
beginning is the very pathos of romance. A minor chord 
runs through it like the tenderest note in a song. What 
eloquence of tears is in that narrative, which reveals in 
this giant of intellectual strength the heart, the single, 
loving heart of a child, and in which he describes the win- 



4 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

ter sleigh-ride up the New Hampshire hills, when his father 
told him that, at whatever cost, he should have a college 
education, and he, too full to speak, laid his head upon his 
father's shoulder and wept ! 

The greatness of Webster and his title to enduring 
gratitude have two illustrations. He taught the people of 
the United States, in the simplicity of common under- 
standing, the principles of the constitution and govern- 
ment of the country ; and he wrought for them, in a style 
of matchless strength and beauty, the literature of states- 
manship. From his lips flowed the discussion of consti- 
tutional law, of economic philosophy, of finance, of inter- 
national right, of national grandeur, and of the whole 
range of high public themes, so clear and judicial that it 
was no longer discussion, but judgment. To-day, and so 
it will be while the republic endures, the student and the 
legislator turn to the full fountain of his statement for 
the enunciation of these principles. What other author- 
ity is quoted, or holds even the second or third place? 
Even his words have imbedded themselves in the common 
phraseology, and come to the tongue like passages from the 
psalms or the poets. I do not know that a sentence or a 
word of Sumner's repeats itself in our every-day par- 
lance. The exquisite periods of Everett are recalled like 
the consummate work of some master of music, but no 
note or refrain sings itself over and over again to our ears. 
The brilliant eloquence of Choate is like the flash of a 
bursting rocket, lingering upon the retina indeed after it 
has faded from the wings of night, but as illusive of our 
grasp as spray-drops that glisten in the sun. The fiery 
enthusiasm of Andrew did, indeed, burn some of his 
heart-beats forever into the sentiment of Massachusetts ; 
but Webster made his language the very household words 



DANIEL WEBSTER. & 

of a nation. They are tlie library of a people. They 
inspired and still inspire patriotism. They taught and 
still teach loyalty. They are the schoolbook of the citi- 
zen. They are the inwrought and accepted fibre of 
American politics. If the temple of our republic shall 
ever fall, they will " still live" above the ground, like those 
great foundation-stones in ancient ruins which remain in 
lonely grandeur, unburied in the dust that over all else 
springs to turf, and make men wonder from what rare 
quarry and by what mighty force they came. To Webster 
almost more than to any other man, — nay, at this distance, 
and in the generous spirit of this occasion, it is hard to 
discriminate among the lustrous names which now cluster 
at the gates of heaven as golden bars mass the west at 
sunset, — yet to Webster, especially of them all, is it due 
that to-day, wherever a son of the United States, at home 
or abroad, " beholds the gorgeous ensign of the republic, 
now known and honored throughout the earth, still full 
high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a 
single star obscured," he can utter a prouder boast than 
" Civis Eomanus sum." For he can say, I am an Ameri- 
can citizen. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

At a Memorial Meeting in the Congregational Church, 
Washington, D. C, February 22, 1884. 

Except amid the affectionate associations of his native 
place and home, no spot could be more fitting in which to 
honor the memory of Wendell Phillips than the capital 
of the nation whose one great blot his fiery eloquence 
burnt out. No day could be more appropriate than the 
birthday of Washington, whose victories for American 
independence were but half won till this zealot preached 
the crusade that crowned them at Appomattox. No body 
of men could more fitly gather around his open grave and 
bedew it with their grateful tears than those who repre- 
sent the race whose shackles he turned into garlands amid 
which they now lay him to rest. Well may the " Goddess 
of Liberty " on yonder dome strain her tear-dimmed eyes 
to the north, listening to catch once more the thrill of a 
voice, but for which she might have towered this day only 
as a brazen lie. Of the great names that in these latter 
days of the republic stand for its redemption from crime 
against itself, and for its perfected consecration to human 
freedom, his blazes out among the foremost few. Upon 
the earlier anti-slavery heights, he gives place to Garrison 
alone. And when I remember that in my own honored 
commonwealth — in Massachusetts, star of the North — 
flamed these two immortal spirits, and so many others 
who clustered around them, I cannot refrain from joining 
my voice with yours in honoring this one of thern^ which 
has latest taken its flight back to God, who gave it. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 7 

In the case of most great men, even of those who sug- 
gest their limitations least, we speak of the steps, the 
milestones, the dates, and events of their career. But to 
recite those of Wendell Phillips seems out of place. His 
was the force, not of the stream, which gathers volume 
as it flows, and pours its resistless flood in a steady cur- 
rent, marking its beneficence by the fair cities it builds 
along its banks ; nor of the fire which, under the mastery 
of law, turns the mighty wheels of the machinery and 
onward locomotion of the age ; but rather of the wind 
that bloweth where it listeth, now in the exquisite music 
of a zephyr over an aeolian harp strung with human sym- 
pathies and graces, and now in the sweep of a tornado, 
smiting every rotten trunk to the earth, and making even 
the sturdy and honest oak bend before its storm. His 
was not the service of Lincoln or Andrew in executive 
station, of Sumner or Stevens in Congress, of Grant or 
Sherman in the field, adapting means to successive steps 
of advance, and working through the best agencies at 
hand to achieve the best results possible ; but it was the 
service of the torch that is flung at large to kindle the 
conflagration at the beginning, and, whatever burns, to 
keep it flaming on. He was no patient ox, toiling under 
the yoke and at his load. He was often rather the goad- 
stick which pricked those who were dragging burdens, 
in the homely carriage of which he was less serviceable 
than were those he prodded. He was a man of inspira- 
tions, not of affairs. His not to make or interpret or 
execute the law ; his not the equipment for that work ; 
but his to quicken the public sentiment of which law 
is the expression and force. When its formulation and 
fruit had come for others, when they had encamped con- 
tent, this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was 



8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

already in tlie nebulous distance, beckoning tbem to a 
new lead and advance. Not the safest guide in the slow 
and sure economies of material welfare, he was rather 
the prophet of the people's conscience, the poet of their 
noblest impulses. 

It seems as if when, in Faneuil Hall nearly fifty years 
ago, in his early youth, he leaped into the arena for hu- 
man rights, he flung aside every incumbrance of ordinary 
growth toward the achievement of a plan of life, and 
streamed at once into flame. Born a patrician, he was 
such a tribune of the people as Rome never dreamed 
of, who knew no law, only the law of their enlargement 
and of their broadening, and of their equal rights of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With the genius 
of a scholar, touched with the fine culture of letters, his 
mind itself a classic, he scorned the noble avenues of the 
statesman, the useful walks of political service, the delights 
of literature, all of which lay at his hand, and gave him- 
self to the passionate impulses of a great human charity, — 
to the cause of the oppressed, the enslaved, the poor, the 
down-trodden, and the friendless. Into the great anti- 
slavery cause and conflict he rode, — a warrior whose 
sword was to flash and whose voice was to ring till the last 
battlefield was won. To that cause he gave all except 
that exquisite loyalty to her who sat at his hearth, which, 
faithful even unto death, is now as grateful and sweet to 
the American people as the white leaves of a flower or 
the tenderest heart-beat in a poet's song. For that cause 
he sacrificed all, enduring, as it is impossible now to real- 
ize, obloquy and shame, hissing and hate. No man is 
altogether the master of his own character or inclination, 
and it is not, perhaps, to be wondered at that, from the 
terrific ordeal through which in those days Phillips went, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 9 

and from the wounds he then received at the hands of his 
own caste, came something of the spirit that never after 
could quite reconcile itself with the ranks that later were 
sincerely ready to do him justice. A victim of injustice, 
there were times when he did injustice. And perhaps 
there could be no more complete tribute to his character, 
than that in his later years, as well as now in the halo of 
his death, his eloquence, his singleness and purity of pur- 
pose, his lofty integrity, and his great work were the ac- 
knowledgment and pride of all his fellow citizens alike ; 
and that to question his opinions was never to accuse the 
disinterested fervor of his convictions and ideas. Ah 
with what admiration — it seems but yesterday in the 
streets of Boston — we looked, as we saw above the throng 
that commanding and high-spirited face, never quite free 
from its scorn of conscious superiority! We turned to 
gaze upon him when he had passed, — that higher-bred 
and more beautiful Puritan Apollo, whose tongue was his 
lute, and whose swift shaft was winged with the immor- 
tal fire of liberty. A city-full and a nation-full honor 
him. He has his reward in the praise even of those who 
differed from him most ; and he has his reward — and to 
him it is the sweetest — in the tears and gratitude of 
thousands in humble life, to whom his name is as that 
thought of a friend, which to many, alas, is so rare, yet 
by every human being is so longed for. There are hum- 
ble homes of plain living, but of high thinking, in 
my own New England, under the shadow of Plymouth 
Rock, along the sea and among the farms, to which my 
heart turns as I speak, and in which are men and women, 
peers of his courage and humanity, though not of his gifts 
and fame, who remember and mourn this leader, whose 
eloquence and fire kindled their youth with enthusiasm 



10 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

for human rights, and who endeared himself to them by 
sharing with them the persecution of the opinions of that 
time. There are oppressed peoples in foreign lands who 
lament an advocate and champion of the larger and 
sweeter liberty of which they dream, and which he yearned 
to see them enjoy. There are five million citizens of our 
own, to whom and to whose descendants he will be as a 
deliverer, like him who led the children of Israel out of 
their bondage. 

As in his own career Phillips disdained the ordinary 
steps and methods of influence and growth, so in any es- 
timate of him all the ordinary modes of analysis and 
criticism are useless. What are his errors in economical 
science ; what are his mistaken estimates of men and mea- 
sures ; what are his bitter injustices to patriots as true as 
himself ; what are his rashnesses of judgment, looked at in 
the light of his lofty consecration to his fellow men and 
of that absolute innocence of any purpose of self-aggran- 
dizement, which you felt as distinctly in his character as 
you heard the music in his voice, and which separated 
him so utterly from the mouthing demagogues whose self- 
seeking is as patent as their roar ? What are all these, if 
these there were, except as they were the incidentals, not 
the essentials, of a nature that went to its mark with the 
relentless stroke of the lightning, and, had it not been 
the lightning, would have been nothing? Our glorious 
summer days sometimes breed, even in the very rankness 
of their opulence, enervating and unhealthy weaknesses. 
The air is heavy. Its breath poisons the blood; the 
pulse of nature is sluggish and mean. Then come the 
tempest and the thunder. So was it in the body politic, 
whether the plague was slavery or whatever wrong ; 
whether it was weakness in men of high degree or tyranny 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 11 

over men of low estate ; whether it was the curse of the 
grog-shop, or the iron hand of the despot at home or 
abroad, — so it was that like the lightning Phillips flashed 
and struck. The scorching, hissing bolt rent the air, now 
here, now there. From heaven to earth, now wild at ran- 
dom, now straight it shot. It streamed across the sky. 
It leaped in broken links of a chain of fire. It sometimes 
fell with reckless indiscrimination alike on the just and 
on the unjust. It sometimes smote the innocent as well 
as blasted the guilty. But when the tempest was over, 
there was a purer and a fresher spirit in the air, and a 
sweeter health. Louder than the thunder, mightier than 
the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, a stiU small voice 
spake in the public heart, and the public conscience woke. 



GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 

Nominating Speech in the Republican Presidential 
Convention at Chicago, June 5, 1884. 

Mr. President and Fellow Delegates, — We are 

here to discliarge a trust. Let us remember that we are 
to account for it hereafter. I appeal to the unhnpassioned 
judgment of this convention. I appeal from the excite- 
ment of this vast concourse to the afterthought of the 
firesides of the people. And remembering that an Ameri- 
can audience never fails in fair i^lay, I appeal even at 
this late hour for an opportunity for brave little Vermont. 
The Republican party commands to-day the confidence 
of the country. It need not invoke its record of twenty- 
five years, for that is the common knowledge and admira- 
tion of the world. It need not appeal to its principles, 
for those are the very foundation of the marvelous pro- 
gress and prosperity of this great republic. There only 
needs that, in its candidate, in the simple elements of his 
personal and public character, it furnish a guarantee of 
its continued fidelity to itself. There only needs that it 
respond to the instinct of the people. That done, its 
triumph in the coming presidential election is as sure as 
the coming of election day. But, gentlemen, that instinct 
must be obeyed. It represents a demand which is as in- 
exorable as fate itself. It recognizes the merits and the 
services of all the candidates before us. It obtrudes no 
word of depreciation for any of them. It cares little for 
issues of expediency or preferences of personal or party 



GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 13 

liking. But by that awful voice of the people which is 
as the voice of God, it sets an imperative standard of its 
choice and bids us rise to that or fall. 

We are convened, therefore, in behalf of no man. 
The country and the party are greater than the fortunes 
or the interests of any man, however dear or honored. 
We are here as Kepublicans, and yet brave and broad 
enough not to be here in the interest of the Eepublican 
party alone. Even in this tumultuous excitement we feel 
that, charged with the most sacred responsibilities that can 
fall upon representatives of the people, we are here in 
the interests of the people, and all the people — of the coun- 
try and the whole country. We are here to select for Pres- 
ident a man from our own ranks, indeed, but a man whose 
record and character, whose tested service, whose tried 
incorruptibility, whose unscathed walk through the storms 
and fires of public life, whose approved wisdom equal to 
every emergency, whose recognized capacity to put a firm, 
safe hand upon the helm, and whose hold upon the con- 
fidence of the people, make him not our choice for them, 
but their choice for themselves. He must be one who 
will command their undivided support. Not merely bril- 
liant qualities, on the one hand, or meritorious qualities, 
on the other, are enough. He must be of the staying 
qualities of the sturdiest American character. He must 
represent no wing or faction of the party, but the whole 
of it. He must be one who will hold every Republican 
to his cordial allegiance, who will rally indifference and 
independence even into aroused conviction and an earnest 
front on our line ; one who will stand for every beat that 
ever throbbed in the national heart for humanity, free- 
dom, conscience, and reform ; one who will stand for what- 
ever has been honest and of good report in our national 



14 GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 

history — for whatever has made for economy, financial 
wisdom, clean politics, and the integrity of national life. 
And, above all, he must be one whose name will carry in 
the coming canvass that sense of security to which, at 
each presidential election, the country turns as the very 
rock of salvation. Such a man, honest and capable, will 
first master the sober judgment and approval of the peo- 
ple, and thenceforward stir them to the only enthusiasm, 
my friends, that counts, and that is the enthusiasm of pub- 
lic confidence. And then on election day, conscious where 
their safety lies, the irresistible uprising of the people, 
like the mighty inroUing of an ocean tide, will sweep him, 
never fear, into the highest seat of your public service. 

That is the measure and demand, not of a party, but of 
the country. Meet it, and you have done your work and 
won your victory in advance. Respond here and now to 
this instinct of the people, and they will take care of the 
result. The standard is high, but the candidate I name 
rises to it. If there be an ideal American citizen in the 
best sense, it is he. You know, the people know, that his 
character, his ability, his worth, his courage are as recog- 
nized and familiar as a household word. Calumny dare 
not assail him, and, if it dare, recoils as from a galvanic 
shock. Against no other candidate can less be said than 
against him. For no other candidate can more. 

I stand here, Mr. President, honored though I stood 
alone, with the duty of presenting his name to this con- 
vention. But it is not I, it is not the State nor the dele- 
gates whom I here represent, who present that name to 
you. It is presented by uncounted numbers of our fellow 
citizens, good men and true, all over this land, who only 
await his nomination to spring to the swift and hearty 
work of his election. It is presented by an intelligent 



GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 15 

press, from Maine to California, representing a healthy 
public sentiment and an advanced public demand. It is 
the name of one whose letter of acceptance of an unso- 
licited honor will constitute all the machinery he will 
have put into its procurement. It is a name which in 
itself is a guarantee of inflexible honesty in government, 
and of the best and wisest cabinet the country can afford, 
— no man in it greater than its head. It is a guarantee 
of appointments to office, fit, clean, and disinterested all 
the way through, — a guarantee of an administration 
which I believe, and which in your hearts you know, will 
realize, not only at home, but abroad, the very highest 
conceptions of American statesmanship. It is a name, 
too, which will carry over all the land a grateful feeling 
of serenity and security like the benignant promise of a 
"perfect day in June." It will be as wholesome and 
refreshing as the green mountains of the native State of 
him who bears it. Their summits tower not higher than 
his worth; their foundations are not firmer than his 
convictions and truth; the verdant and prolific slopes 
that grow great harvests at their feet are not richer than 
the fruitage of his long and lofty labors in the service 
of his country. Honest and capable, unexceptionable 
and fit, the best and most available, the very staunchest 
of the old Republican guard, the most unflinching of 
American patriots, with the kindly heart of a courteous 
gentleman, as well as the robust and rugged mind of a 
great statesman, not more sternly just in the halls of Con- 
gress than tender in that sanctity of the American heart, 
the American home, a man of no class, no caste, no pre- 
tense, but a man of the people, East, West, North, South, 
because a representative of their homeliest, plainest, 
and best characteristics ! Massachusetts, enthusiastically 



16 GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 

leaping her own borders, commends and nominates Mm to 
this great Eepublican convention as the man it seeks, as a 
man of its instinctive and honest choice, as the one man 
whom its constituents everywhere will hail with one un- 
broken shout, not only of satisfaction, but of relief. 

Gentlemen, I nominate as the Eepublican candidate for 
the next President of the United States the Honorable, 
aye, the honorable George F. Edmunds of Vermont. 



RESPONSE 

At the Dinner of the New England Society on Forefathers' 
Day, at Delmonico's, New York, December 22, 1884. 

I OUGHT to thank you, Mr. Cliairman, for assigning 
to me a toast of such remote reference as " Forefathers' 
Day." Some of us in New England feel just at this time 
like going as far back as possible for any cause of victori- 
ous glorification. You here in New York may knock over 
our modern fetiches, but you cannot reach the chip on the 
shoulder of our Pilgrim forefather. We celebrate to- 
night the day of his landing two hundred and sixty-four 
years ago. I suppose I shall startle nobody if I say it 
was a great event. Indeed, I have heard gentlemen inti- 
mate — once even at this loyal table, though I am bound 
to say it was the envious utterance of a Knickerbocker — 
that they would admit its greatness if we who glory in it 
would not argue and assert it so loudly and so often. As 
Judge Hoar said of the malcontents in the recent politi- 
cal campaign, if they needs must go out they need n't 
slam the door so hard ; so these suggest that, if we must 
praise the Pilgrim, we need not do it in such a way as to 
make comparison with the ancestors of other people not 
altogether agreeable. Our modest answer is that we can- 
not help it if the superiority in that respect is on our side. 
We cannot help it, but we can be merciful. We should 
remember that even an Athenian tired of hearing Aris- 
tides always called the Just. In our case, also, I doubt 
not the lessons we draw get to be somewhat monotonous 



18 THE PILGRIMS. 

and lieavy. It was a wise little girl — my own — who 
said, when a good old lady offered to tell her a nice story, 
she would like to hear it if she were not pretty sure there 
would be the usual moral at the end of it. 

And there is another reason why one should hesitate to 
pay the tribute of your society to the Pilgrims. The 
eagle has been let loose so often that his wings are a little 
shaky. I admit that I ought to respond. I represent, to 
put it mildly, the foremost Congressional District in the 
United States, before which Boston and this magnificent 
conglomerate which you call New York pale their intel- 
lectual fires, for in it is Plymouth Rock. My direct 
ancestor, too, Thomas Clark, who came over in the third 
Pilgrim ship, the Anne, in 1623, resides on Burial Hill 
in an humble one-story basement, and his is one of the 
three or four original gravestones still standing there. I 
have no doubt that he now regards himself as well repaid 
for the hardships of his earthly pilgrimage, when he re- 
flects that his grandson in a remote generation draws an 
indifferently earned salary from the treasury of the mighty 
empire he helped to found. I trust that I, at my end of 
the line, feel a due sense of filial gratitude to him for his 
labors and perils in that behalf, when monthly I draw 
that humble stipend. Indeed, I sometimes think we do 
not sufficiently appreciate what our fathers did for us in 
that respect. We are too apt to limit our appreciation to 
certain commonplaces of fundamental moral principles, of 
great lumbering planks of civil and religious liberty, and 
of education, with its three E's, Eeading, 'Riting, and 
'Rithmetic, which have recently been corrupted into that 
more striking, perhaps, but certainly unfortunate allit- 
eration which an illiterate preacher lately misquoted as 
" Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." 



THE PILGRIMS. 19 

We should go further, and extend our appreciation to 
the homelier but closer-coming blessings of the Govern- 
ment they founded, with its public trough of one hundred 
and fifty thousand compartments, more or less, its udders 
of emolumental patronage flowing with milk and soap, 
and its warm official hearth-fires, where, after half the 
boys have toasted their shins for four years, the other half 
demand to come in from their dance on the cold pavement 
and toast theirs, when, as in the recent electoral contest, 
one good party is turned down and out, and another, 
which has yet to earn, as let us trust it will earn, its laud- 
atory adjective, is brought to the top by a mysterious dis- 
pensation which the same preacher, mourning defeat, 
yet dutifully resigned, meaning to quote correctly and 
reverently, but unsuccessful in the attempt, might have 
called the dispensation of " an All-wise but Unscrupulous 
Providence." 

Yes, I hesitate at your toast. I am like a neophyte 
who scrapes the bow across a violin and makes it an in- 
strument of torture. I think of the master who, nestling 
it tenderly beneath his cheek, as if it and he were one, 
touches the sweet chords of however ancient a melody, 
and, rapt himself, enwraps our listening souls in memories 
that by turns stir us to heroism or melt us to tears. The 
poetry of life is its crown, — that exaltation of sentiment, 
of religious feeling, of heroic endeavor, of immortal aspi- 
ration, which make life, when at its best, a poem. And 
never since Moses led the children of Israel toward the 
promised land has there been such an epic as the voyage 
of the Mayflower and the landing at Plymouth. If the 
master of a nobler instrmnent than the violin could sweep 
the chords of that great song, he would wake no dirge or 
lament, but the melody of the universal heart, the spirit 



20 THE PILGRIMS. 

of loftiest vision, and would indeed by turns stir to hero- 
ism and melt to tears. Ah, how narrowly and mistakenly 
we limit those men and women of the Mayflower when 
we shrivel them with the winter blast of a December day, 
harden them into the solemnity of ascetics, or think of 
them as refugees from personal annoyances. 

While they were, as some one has said, " neither Puri- 
tans nor persecutors," they were, as is too rarely said, 
something far more, — they were poets, they were idealists. 
They were glad children of the light, seeking for " more 
light." They were warm with youth and adventure, yet 
transcendentalists mounting a new heaven. Read the 
compact drawn in the cabin of the Mayflower, — read in 
it the statement of the object of their coming, and say 
where has the genius of bard or prophet struck such a 
strain as those words expressive of their purpose : " For 
the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith 
and honor of our King and countrie ! " Here is no 
wretched care for personal interests, no craven thought of 
flight or escape from petty persecutions, no whining solici- 
tude for individual fortune, but the high soul of men who 
" plant a colony " and found an empire for nothing less 
than the glory of God, the advancement of their faith, 
the honor of their country. This is not the fuss of a 
house-moving, but the sublimity of inspired poetic genius, 
as it is also the consummation of statesmanship and patri- 
otism. To them the coast, which Mrs. Ilemans has so 
extravagantly belied, and which is really as gentle as a 
post-election editorial, was the fringe of God's paradise ; 
its wild grapes and red berries and running vines, and 
its mayflowers, peeping in spring-time through its moss, 
were the bursting glory of a better than tropical luxuri- 
ance. 



THE PILGRIMS. 21 

Do you think any ignobler spirit than the poet's 
wrought this vision, or would have kept them there when 
the first winter struck down half their number, and, stand- 
ing on the hill, they watched the sails of the returning 
Mayflower fade out in the light of an April day ? You 
sneer at their psalm-singing and think complacently of 
a shrieking opera. That is because you know only of 
psalms sung through the nose. They sung psalms, but 
they were songs of high cheer and were their melody and 
outburst, — not sombre strains, but peace, supremacy, and 
content, in which mingled the fireside voices of pure 
women and happy children. You think they shrank from 
the savage and heard his whoop in their dreams. That is 
because you are timid and live in cities. To them the 
Indian's first word was " Welcome, Englishmen." With 
now and then a rare and wholesome correction, he lived 
in peace with them for generations ; and tradition has it 
that two children of the forest begged to be buried at the 
feet of Bradford, and now lie with him on Burial Hill. 
Fear ! Standish, panting for the elbow-room of perfect 
freedom, and separating himself from the rest, even as 
they had all separated themselves from their English 
homes, dwelt apart across the channel in the grandeur of 
his solitary Duxbury realm. 

You think there was no softness or merriment in their 
lives ; but you forget that John Alden looked in the eyes 
of Priscilla Mullens and walked with her in the " lovers' 
lanes" of the "forest primeval." You forget to catch 
the laugh with which Mary Chilton, ancestress of Copley 
and Lyndhurst, waded from the boat to the shore, — first 
woman of them all to put her dainty foot on American 
soil. You forget the romance of Alice Southworth's com- 
ing later over from England to wed the young widower 



22 THE PILGRIMS. 

Bradford, who liad loved her when a girl among the Eng- 
lish hawthorns. You forget that the Pilgrim's was the 
first New England home, — God bless it ! — the same rural 
home that you and I came from, over whose doors the 
roses grew in our youth, fading there, but fresh and fra- 
grant always here in our hearts. You picture a rigid 
ecclesiastical tyranny. You forget that there was among 
them no ordained minister — happy parish ! — and that 
Brewster, who led their devotions, had been a man of 
courts, a bearer of Queen Elizabeth's dispatches. You 
pity them for a life of more than j)rovincial narrowness 
of affairs. You forget that Winslow, a man of the world 
and of travel in foreign parts, was an ambassador and 
diplomat, negotiating treaties with Massasoit ; that he 
was four times sent over sea to England — what man at 
this board can equal that record — to arrange the rela- 
tions of the old world with the new ; and that he died in 
the service of Cromwell, superintending the invasion of 
the West Indies. 

Picture Governor Bradford, in his long cloak, march- 
ing to meeting of a Sunday morning, flanked on one side 
by Brewster, the saint, and on the other by Standish, the 
soldier. Compared with that, what is the Fourth of 
March Inauguration of a President, flanked on both sides 
by expectants? Think of the stately excursions of the 
Pilgrims through the virgin forest ; their quieting of In- 
dian troubles ; their making of history where we make 
cloth and leather ; their adventurous sailing expeditions 
to explore Massachusetts Bay, the wind fresh, the waves 
rippling in the sunshine, the freedom of a new world 
in their hearts, and anon opening on their gaze the 
mouths of the Charles and the Mystic, and the three hills 
of Boston, silent then, but never silent since. Think 



THE PILGRIMS. 23 

of tlieir discreet squelching of the Independents, who 
at that time were rioting at Merry Mount in Quincy, 
and who, by the way, still infest that vicinity even to 
this day, as my own imperiled political scalp bears 
witness. 

These Pilgrims were men who were greater than the 
restrictions of English life ; who were broader than the 
huckstering and traffic of their Holland tarrying-place ; 
and who, therefore, fled from both, gasping for larger 
breath. They were no narrow Puritans who vexed them- 
selves over questions of method or form or discipline in 
the church. They broke altogether from the church itself, 
were separatists, and set up their own establishment for 
themselves and for the New World, — themselves an evan- 
gel of religious and civil liberty. No Puritans they, 
intolerant of another's faith, but great-hearted liberals, 
welcoming Roger Williams, the original mugwump, when, 
driven from Salem, he came to them, but found his own 
sweet will so duU, that, like a true mugwump, his restless 
soul soon wearied of its own freedom, and he returned 
to the intolerant fold that had driven him forth, as mug- 
wumps sooner or later always do return, and as intolerant 
folds sooner or later always do take them back. Sym- 
pathy for the hardships of the Pilgrim fathers ! They 
would laugh at you. They never dreamed of yielding or 
of going or looking back. Why, it were worth a thou- 
sand years, a cycle of Cathay, to have breathed the air 
with them, to have put one's name to that cabin compact, 
to have planted that colony. Compare their great enter- 
prise and range with selling stocks in Wall Street, with 
the strife of bulls and bears, with winning or losing a 
Presidential race, and in either case being trampled on 
and run over by fifty million howling American citizens. 



24 THE PILGRIMS. 

clergymen included, or with achieving the fame of figuring 
in the colored prints of Puck or Jingo ! 

Truth is, our lives are the rich responsive answer to 
their own. Theirs was a psean. They were idealists, poets, 
seers, but it was that germinating and rich idealism which 
flowers out in the world's glory and beneficence. If it 
was poetry, it is a poetry that lives after them, in a larger 
vitality and range. Its music is not a far-off strain. It 
is not confined to a stone's-throw from the rock on which 
they set foot. It rolls across a continent from sea to sea. 
It explores the frozen zone, and just now wooes and wins 
the Nicaraguan Isthmus. It is poetry, indeed, but the 
poetry of industry, of growth, of school and farm, of shop 
and ship and car. You hear it now in the hum of ten 
thousand mills, in the trip of a hundred thousand ham- 
mers, in the bustle of myriad exchanges, in the voice of a 
mighty people who are a mighty people, and will be 
mightier yet, because and so far as they are true to the 
courage of the Pilgrim Fathers, to their lofty stride and 
aspiration, to their superiority over fortune and the dust, 
to their foundations of education and the home, and to 
their consecration of themselves to the glory of God, the 
advancement of faith and the honor of their country. 

Forefathers' Day ! We have no day that is not Fore- 
fathers' Day. Our national Independence is their sepa- 
ratism. Standish is the common prototype of Grant and 
Sherman. Whatever is wholesome in our social life is the 
effluence of their homes. Our constitutional liberty and 
our constitutional law are the consummate flower of their 
compact. I doubt if there be to-day a radical footprint 
that may not trace itself to them ; and many an economic 
and industrial result is an issue from their good sense and 
honest labor. Our absorption of the progressive elements 
of other nationalities and religions, illustrated by the recent 



THE PILGRIMS. 25 

election of an Irish-born Catholic mayor of the very New 
England metropolis, is philosophically the outgrowth of 
the liberalism with which they welcomed all men on the 
common ground of good citizenship. 

This great democracy of ours, the broadest-based and 
securest government in the world, self-sufficient, self-sus- 
taining, self-restrained, and developing new capacity to 
meet every new necessity and demand of its own stupen- 
dous and startling growth, is only the expansion of their 
own democracy. Let us do our duty by it as faithfuUy 
as they did theirs. Doing that, let us await its destiny as 
calmly as did they, assured, as they were, that liberty is 
better than repression ; that liberty, making and obeying 
its own laws, is God ; and that unless man, made in His 
image, is a failure, the self-government of a free and edu- 
cated people, whatever its occasional vicissitudes, will not 
and cannot fail. 

I do not know that in cold blood I could stand by all I 
have said concerning the Pilgrim Fathers ; but do we not 
owe them something more than a half -disguised sneer or 
that patronizing crust of sympathy which we toss to a 
shivering beggar? This is not altogether a rhetorical 
interrogation. I believe — just this once — in the Meth- 
odist custom of passing the contribution-box, provided I 
hold it and the other fellows fill it. At Plymouth, on one 
of its hills, overlooking the ocean, is a noble monument of 
granite. To our provincial eyes it is a bigger thing than 
the Washington Monument. The pedestal is forty-five 
feet high. On that stands, towering thirty-six feet higher, 
a colossal statue of Faith, the generous but modest gift 
of a donor unknown till his death. Her eyes look to- 
ward the sea. Forever she beholds upon its waves the in- 
coming Mayflower. She sees the Pilgrims land. They 



26 THE PILGRIMS. 

vanisli, but she, tlie monument of tlieir faith, remains 
and tells their story to the world. This our generation, 
too, shall pass away, and its successors for centuries to 
come ; but she will stand, and, overlooking our forgotten 
memory, will still speak of them and of their foundation 
of the republic on the Plymouth rocks of Faith, Liberty, 
Law, Morality, and Education. 

Around the pedestal at her feet, statues of the two 
last sit in kindred granite. Those of Liberty and Law 
are yet lacking, as they were not lacking in the temple 
which the Pilgrims built. What a happy thing it would 
be if you, the New England Society of New York City, 
contributing to this monumental group raised to their 
honor, should to Faith, Education, and Morality, add Law 
or Liberty, or both ; or, rather than permit any favorit- 
ism in such an inestimable privilege, if you should add 
one and your sister society in Brooklyn add the other. 



EULOGY 

On Senator Austin F. Pike, of New Hampshire, in the 
House of Representatives at Washington, February 
23, 1887. 

I DO not rise, Mr. Speaker, to enlarge upon Senator 
Pike's political or professional career. That matter is 
sufficiently touched by those more familiar with it. In 
that respect it is enough for me that his life was, as has 
been portrayed, one of faithful service and perfect integ- 
rity, and that honors were never paid to a man of more 
genuine worth or honest record. 

I rise rather because, during his senatorial residence in 
Washington, we lived under the same roof. Almost 
daily I saw him, and was in converse with him, and I came 
to know something of the deeper inspirations and treasures 
of his life. To the world at large our lives here are lives 
of official routine. But to ourselves, as the days go by, 
bringing us closer together, familiarizing us with each 
other's faces, with the grasp of each other's hands, and 
with the sound of each other's voices, suddenly it comes 
that we are no longer perfunctory associates, but friends 
and companions. There is in each, indeed, the conven- 
tional discharge of his duty, but beneath that and far 
more impressive on our consciousness is the recognition of 
qualities that mark not so much the statesman as the 
man. Out of the unrelieved mass of the representative 
population which we face when we enter here, there stead- 
ily emerges on us in clearer outline, each day we stay, 
traits of individual character, personalities of individual 



28 SENATOR PIKE. 

men, the opening of the treasures of the individual human 
heart, and the expression of those affections, tastes, ambi- 
tions, devotions, purposes, or ideals which make each one 
of us a distinct individuality, yet subtly intimate with 
every other. And when one goes from us, say what you 
will, recite never so eloquently the story of his public 
achievement, the one sincere chord that thrills in the 
breasts of those who remain is that of the regard he had 
won in their hearts. And the measure of that regard is 
the measure of response to his memory. 

In this respect I recall Senator Pike with a reverent 
tenderness I cannot express. From the time we both en- 
tered the Forty-eighth Congress I recall meeting, almost 
daily each session, a sweet, grave, benignant face, more like 
the picture of Rufus Choate — a graduate of the same 
Granite State, prolific of great men — than any other 
that occurs to me. I recall a gentle, almost pathetic, 
smile, significant of the sweet and gentle spirit from 
which it sprang, — a man ripe in years, delicate in health, 
yet suggestive of something of a certain rugged New Eng- 
land plainness, intent on duty, going about his work in 
the simplest and most exemplary way, and absolutely free 
from all entanglements of selfish strategic manoeuvre. 
He had not been long enough in the Senate to take, if 
ever he would have taken, foremost part in its greater 
questions and debates. But there was the most diligent, 
painstaking, careful, and thorough attention to the details 
of the cumulative work which the chairmanship of his 
laborious committee threw upon him. To this work he 
brought not only patience and assiduity, but a sound judg- 
ment, an intelligent comprehension, and the trained mind 
of a good lawyer and a wise man. Of such a character it 
may seem a little thing in the way of eulogy, but to me 



SENATOR PIKE. 29 

who was near him it is a very grateful thing to recall the 
simple genuineness of the man's nature, — even the kind 
tones of his voice, his encouraging interest in younger 
men, and the gracious words to children, which, together 
with a certain benignity in his face, drew them to him. 
It is a grateful thing to remember that among all who 
came into companionship with him there was an unspoken 
but unquestioned recognition of him as a true, honest, good 
man, with all that those fundamental terms mean ; that to 
all who came to him in his official relation, no matter 
how humble the applicant or small the petition, there 
was a genuine response ; and that if one may touch the 
sacred altar of the domestic circle, he was its very bene- 
diction. By reason of an affection of the heart his life 
was continually trembling in the most sensitive balance. 
And if I dwell on these personal traits, it is because he 
seemed to me to be conscious all this time that the angel 
of death walked at his side, ready at any moment to take 
his hand and lead him away ; and that with that conscious- 
ness there came to him not only the brave spirit of resig- 
nation, but the braver spirit of doing his duty to the last, 
to the last letting only sunshine radiate from his face, only 
helpfulness from his hand. When our friends die, we 
say God rest their souls. But God rested his while he 
yet lived in the very face of death. No soldier ever faced 
it in the sudden and soon-over flash of battle more hero- 
ically than did he, with a serenity that was proof against 
its more appalling, because constant and silent, close im- 
pendence. 

It was the fitness of poetic justice, that not here in 
Washington, but in his own New Hampshire home, death 
claimed him — amid the incomparable beauty and glory 
of the New Hampshire autumn sunshine — in the open 



30 SENATOR PIKE. 

air of that paradise of mountain and forest and lake and 
farm and field to which every New Hampshire heart is 
loyal, and on the acres won and cultivated by his own 
hand. There, as peacefully as his own blameless life had 
run, as serenely as his kind face beamed, came the end. 
The angel, who is even tenderer and gentler than her 
sister Sleep, had indeed walked at his side so long that he 
recognized her as the blessed angel of man's succor and 
peace. She had waited till their walk that bright day, 
over the pleasant fields and under the blue sky, gave the 
opportunity happiest for her and for him. Then she 
gathered her arms about him. His head fell upon her 
shoulder even as he went. And lo ! he was at rest in the 
mansions of his Father's house. 



ADDRESS 

Before the American Unitarian Association in Music Hall, 
Boston, May 29, 1877. 

I LIKE this idea of missionary work right here at home, 
and I care very little under what banner it proceeds. I 
am not much afraid of what our various sects denominate, 
in everybody except themselves, false doctrine, if only it 
be honestly entertained, and if there is candor enough to 
reject it when its falsity is made apparent. It will be 
time for any of us to call another's doctrine false when we 
can ourselves with any confidence assert that our own is 
true. False and true are relative terms, and I shall pro- 
bably know very little about the false till I have arrived 
at the absolutely true. Let us remember that the false 
is often a lame step towards the true. A grand thing, 
indeed, it would be, in a catholic and hopeful spirit, to 
regard all reaching of the human intelligence and soul 
as a growth along the whole line towards the truth. Let 
us not despise or dread honest and inquiring error. How 
have the sciences of medicine and astronomy, how have 
the progresses of social life, the causes of education, of 
health, of legislation, been advanced except by deduc- 
tion from error and the hard discipline of blander ! 

I preface this because I regard our mission as only a 
mission, not an end ; as a very humble, but intelligent 
and fearless means, which in God's providence is doing 
God's work and seeking God's truth, along with other 
means, some better perhaps, some certainly not so good, 



32 UNITARIAN WORK. 

and all poor compared with future possibilities of Chris- 
tianity. It is a mission fit here and now, because the 
mission of our liberal faith has always been not so much 
to the ignorance of remote heathen as to intelligence and 
common sense and spiritual attainment like those of this 
rare and excellent New England community. It has been 
a twofold mission, and I am not sure that in one of its 
two directions its work, as a distinctive work of its own, 
is not approaching completion. For a century, more or 
less, it has been a very ploughshare in the hard and bitter 
soil of a severe theology, which hid the smiles of a tender 
Father always behind the frown of an offended and 
averted Deity, which robbed human nature of its worth 
and dignity, and which substituted the skeleton of a tech- 
nical and complicated scheme of injustice for the warm 
life of the domesticity of man with God. On all this it 
has let in sunlight and gladness and cheer. It has mel- 
lowed even the shadow of death with the tints of a golden 
sunset of promise. It has left its imprint not more in its 
own ranks than in ranks outside its own. Its results are 
hardly more Channing and Hale and Clarke than Brooks 
and Stanley. Its influence is not more patent in the fruit- 
ful graft of the Methodist CoUyer than in the earnest 
work of the revivalist Moody, who seems almost of an- 
other faith than that of the revivalists of fifty years ago. 
I want no more generous and comfortable atmosphere 
than pervades the churches of so many of our neighbors, 
who differ from us to-day less in spirit than in name, and 
from whose number our own ministry is now and then 
supplied with many of its shining lights. 

It has been a good work, — that of our liberal faith in 
this direction ; and, may be, in this direction, its most 
effective labor is done. It is not for us to say that the 



UNITARIAN WORK. 33 

time is not near when it will itself no longer guide the 
advance, but in its turn follow some brighter torch, some 
more incisive lead. Be that as it may, the other element 
of its mission it can never exhaust. Its crusade against 
narrowness of dogma over, the better and endless work of 
being a live, vitalizing, inspiring, practical, constant, per- 
meating spring and flow of Christian character and love 
and faith in the world should absorb its endeavors. Sci- 
ence, scholarship, brains, will take care of the letter and the 
doctrine ; let us have now the full measure of the spirit 
and the life. Let us preach the sweetness of faith and 
duty, more of the soul of Jesus, more of the spiritual 
exaltation that lifts the conduct, the thought, the hope, 
the act. Would there were more divinity schools turning 
out classes of young men all richly and mainly educated 
in spiritual grace, as our academies turn out boys drilled 
in Latin exercises ! Would that our churches might glow 
more with the warmth of religious kindling, echoing less 
with the puzzles of the modern schoolmen ! Would that 
the hearts of men and women might be touched, their lives 
guided, so that Christian civilization should be not the 
husk of a euphuism, but the full corn in the ear of Chris- 
tian living ; and that we could feel assured that our faith 
were indeed making us better and holier ; moulding our 
relations ; guiding our walk ; entering into our business, 
and even our politics ; directing our education ; reforming 
our reforms ; enlightening our treatment of the criminal ; 
attacking our intemperance ; sanctifying and spiritual- 
izing our ambitions ; making our religion not a form, a 
habit, a convenience, but something bountiful and large 
and immanent ; making our churches places of worship, 
and training us, through Christ's sweet example, into 
loving, trusting, obedient, and pious children of God, — 



34 UNITARIAN WORK. 

blessed because gentle in spirit ; meek ; hungering and 
thirsting after righteousness ; merciful ; pure in heart ; 
peacemakers ; and persecuted, if at all, for righteousness' 
sake ! From my soul I believe we have nothing so good 
as the gospel of Jesus. Our church, having dissipated 
shadow and gloom, must not and will not fall short of the 
substance. That substance is that gospel, — the life, his- 
tory, words, character, example, faith, and, more than all, 
the principles of Jesus, which all appeal to the heart of 
humanity, as no abstraction can ; and by clinging to 
which, and dwelling on which, and preaching which, and 
endearing which, other churches reach men as sometimes 
we do not. Let us, too, throw out one more anchor in 
this same deep and restful haven. Not an iota less of 
intelligence and reason and truth, but a worldfidl and a 
heartfull of the spirit of him who through his own has 
linked our souls so palpably to the divine soul, that the 
avenue to the Father's love and benediction seems to lie 
straight through the tender heart of the Son. 



EESPONSE 

For the Commonwealth at the Dinner of the Ancient and 
Honorable Artillery Company, at Faneuil Hall, June 5, 
1882. 

I DO not forget, Mr. Commander and gentlemen, that I 
am here to-day not only as a civil magistrate, — an office 
which, of course, any of you might have, could you spare 
the time, — but also as an honorary member of this ancient 
and honorable company, — a position which I share with 
Wales, and with Wales only. By Wales it is unnecessary 
to say that I refer, not to our gallant new brigadier and 
commissioner of police, but a gentleman across the water, 
who, while I, more fortunate, feast at this sumptuous board, 
is obliged to content himself, for the present, with an Irish 
stew. Bearing this relation to you, no word shall escape 
my lips that lightly speaks of your fame, your bearing, or 
your merits as a military organization. From the top of 
the New England pyramid, almost two centuries and a 
half look down on you to-day, and do you honor. A 
saucy press may point its inky finger ; the citizen who 
never buckled a sword to his side, except in time of war, 
may wag his head ; but, while thrones and custom-house 
officials totter, while men may come and men may go, 
the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company flows on 
forever; and its morning drum-beat, following the fife, 
and keeping company with your graceful step, circles, if 
not the earth, at least its hub, with one continuous and 
unbroken strain of the martial airs of Yankee Massachu- 
setts. As we marched hither, and I looked into the upper 



36 THE ANCIENTS. 

windows of tlie buildings that line the way, I could not 
forget tliat the tired sewing-girl ceased singing the '' Song 
of the Shirt," that the laboring man wiped the sweat from 
his honest brow, that the organ-grinder stopped his tune, 
that the newsboy stood motionless, as they watched your 
march, — perhaps their only amusement for the whole 
year. 

Age cannot wither your appetites, nor custom stale 
your infinite variety. The years have fallen from you 
like the sunbeams from the helmet of Hector. Still the 
same defiant march that neither storm nor tempest, nor 
discipline by land or sea, nor anything but actual service 
can retard. Still the same artistically irregular step and 
wheel. Still the same familiar handling of musket and 
sword so characteristic of men who carry them only once 
a year, as you have carried them for two hundred and 
forty-four years, yet never have shed a drop of blood, never 
terrified wife or child, — except your own. Still the same 
picturesque variety of uniform which finds itself rivaled 
nowhere else except upon the stage of the opera. And 
yet, if you will allow me to say so, I trust the time will 
never come when the Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
Company will wear an unbroken uniform. All pleasantry 
aside, there is not a citizen that sees you marching through 
the streets who does not see in the variety of your uni- 
forms the representation of our martial organizations which 
went through the flame and smoke of war, or who does 
not recognize that beneath them beat hearts which twenty 
years ago were, and which twenty years hence, should 
we need them, will still be ready to fight for the honor 
of Massachusetts. You have also shown every faithful 
citizen of the Commonwealth that, while too busy to serve 
in the narrow confines of the jury-box, he may serve her 
in another field better for himself and possibly for her. 



THE ANCIENTS. 37 

You have inaugurated a system of civil service wliicli 
reforms even the young reformers, putting promotion not 
upon the rock of political influence, not upon the accident 
of merit, but as your later commanders unanimously 
tell us, upon the proud distinction of personal beauty. 

When this morning, in your line of march, you saluted 
the venerable State House, you saluted an edifice a century 
and a half younger than yourselves. Your very years, 
while they compel you to put the example of good conduct 
before your fellow citizens, entitle you also to their honor 
and respect. Even in the time of my enlistment in the 
executive service, how much I can recall connected with 
your glory. Year after year the soft heart of June, with 
more than Raleigh's chivalrous courtesy, has thrown her 
mantle of sunshine under your feet, although to-day, weep- 
ing for very joy, she bedewed it later with her laughing 
tears. There has at times been a little mud in the streets, 
— not too much, but just enough, — to prove the steadi- 
ness of your foothold. Horton, Hale, CoUyer, Bolles — 
priests of lofty faith and inspiring eloquence — have 
taught you, from the sacred desk of ancient Hollis, your 
obligations to your fellow men and your duty to God. 
From this platform you have heard the rarely graceful 
declamation of Governor Rice, and the scholarly periods 
of Mayor Prince. Here to-day you see again that vener- 
able comrade of your own, Marshall P. Wilder, twice your 
Commander, whose head and heart are crowned with the 
golden harvest of more than fourscore years. And, in 
my time, what a succession of commanders — gallantly 
representing the citizen soldier — have you not had in the 
commanding presences of General Martin, Colonel Wilder, 
Major Stevens, and Captain Cundy. You may encase, to 
be opened one hundred years hence, the cold letter which 
"writes the civilization and the institutions of our time; 



38 THE ANCIENTS. 

but you cannot send down to posterity those currents of 
the blood, that speaking of the face, those generous sym- 
pathies of the heart, that common enthusiasm for the 
bettering of the world, which characterize the men, whom 
in the various departments of life you, to an extent, repre- 
sent, and who to-day make Boston, of course, the centre 
of the universe, and Massachusetts the paradise of com- 
monwealths. If she be, as your toast says, " foremost 
among the sisterhood of States," it is not because of the 
fertility of her soil or the felicit}^ of her situation. It is, 
as the eloquent preacher said this morning, because of the 
manhood of her citizens, the freedom of her thought, the 
liberality of her institutions, the high standard of her 
character, education, and public sentiment, and the equal- 
ity of the rights of her people. There never was so glori- 
ous a democracy before. I join in your prayer : " Long 
may her ascendency continue unimpaired." Not an as- 
cendency of wealth or power for its own sake ; not an 
ascendency of pride or presumption ; but an ascendency 
of the civilization and happiness of all her people ; an 
ascendency of good government, and of the wholesome 
social life of a self-respecting and self-supporting citizen- 
ship ; an ascendency of pure homes and of honest in- 
dustry, graced and enlarged with the refinements of litera- 
ture, the charms of eloquence, the songs of poets, the 
preaching of wholesome doctrine, and the progress of 
science. At the suggestion of such a range, what names 
spring to the mind ! Names not of the dead, but of those 
immortal ones who live forever in the thrilling heart-beats 
of Massachusetts. May this ancient and honorable com- 
pany, for many years to come, minister and contribute to 
the same lofty standard — to the ideal soldier's fine sense 
of honor — to the true citizen's high sense of duty ! 



WELCOME 

To THE American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, at the Institute of Technology, August 25, 1880. 

In behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I am 
happy to extend cordial welcome to the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science. It was organ- 
ized thirty-three years ago, in this her capital city, and it 
holds the charter of its corporate life under the act of 
her legislature. It has enrolled upon its membership the 
names of sons of hers who, by their contributions to the 
store of useful knowledge, have paid her the best return 
for the education she gave them. Among its presidents 
it reckons names precious in her estimation and memory, 
— the names of Agassiz, Peirce, Gould, and Gray. Mas- 
sachusetts regards the true advancement of science with 
no jealous or distrustful eye, but rather as a synonym for 
the greater happiness of the people, the better mastery of 
nature, the foundation of a surer faith in God the Crea- 
tor, the nearer equality of a democratic state. She re- 
joices in its achievements, not only when she welcomes 
from all the states of the Union such an illustrious ga- 
thering of scientific men as are here to-day in its interest ; 
but also when she hears the ring of its hammer, the click 
of its chisel in the hands of her own artisans and me- 
chanics, who in the varied useful and homely industries 
of civilization, in her machine-shops, at the wheels of her 
railroad cars, in her manufactories, are dignifying and 
elevating the lot of labor and the craft of handiwork, and 



40 SCIENCE. 

at the same time contributing to the enlargement of the 
comforts, the opportunities, the usefulness of human life, 
and the common weal of her citizens. For science has 
no favorites in the beneficence of its results. It discloses 
no secret that is not echoed around the globe. If it elec- 
trify the wire with messages of joy or of appeal, it is for 
the ear of the humblest laborer as well as for that of a 
king. If Bigelow invent or perfect his loom, it is that 
the floor of the farmer's cottage may be carpeted as softly 
to the farmer's foot, and as tastefully to his eye, as if he 
were a merchant prince. Whether it be the inventions 
that have developed the exhaustless power of steam ; that 
have made the lightning a handmaiden ; that have ren- 
dered warmth and light cheap and common comforts for 
all alike ; that have bettered our food ; that have provided 
transportation with marvelous economy and speed, or that 
have enabled the remotest provincial to be a cosmopolite, 
and have laid the world under contribution to the Ameri- 
can citizen, high or low, rich or poor, science has taken 
no exclusive as well as no backward step. Her march is 
like that of the sun. Eternal dawn and brightening go 
before her. The darkness flies, the shadows disappear, 
and her blessing falls on all the world alike. It is in this 
spirit that Massachusetts welcomes you who make science 
your mistress, and who minister to her advancement. If 
there be within our commonwealth populous and busy 
cities and towns, alive with thrift and industry, singing 
the song of the wheel, the hammer, and the loom, and 
sweet with homes ; if there be institutions of learning ; if 
there be provision broadcast for the education and eleva- 
tion of all her children, independent of race or color or 
condition, it is because the advancement of science has 
made all this possible and easy. From Franklin and 



SCIENCE. 41 

Rumford to Morse and Bell, Massachusetts has welcomed 
and fostered every new addition to scientific enterprise 
and achievement. And yet she pays you the highest com- 
pliment by asking for yet more. Her farms, her facto- 
ries, her homes, all clamor for still swifter means of 
development and product and comfort. If she points 
with pride to her great names in the realm of scientific 
research and progress, she also points to them still more 
impressively as examples of what yet greater things this 
generation may do for the advancement of science and 
the bettering of human life. 



ADDRESS 

At the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Massachusetts 
Charitable Mechanics' Association Building on Hunting- 
ton Avenue, Boston, March 15, 1881. 

I BRING witli pleasure to this occasion the good wishes 
of the Commonwealth. Your society bears her name. 
It was incorporated by her enactment. It is but a little 
younger than herself. Among its members and orators it 
numbers many of her magistrates and chosen ones. I 
cannot help referring to one of them, whose name I bear 
and of whose kin I am, — Governor John Davis, — as also 
to Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, triple promoter of agricul- 
ture, commerce, and mechanics, who is fortunately spared 
to grace this platform with his venerable and noble pre- 
sence. Not only does your society bear the name of the 
Commonwealth, but it associates with her name those 
other titles which mark the culmination of modern civili- 
zation and suggest the crowning glories of her own pro- 
gress, the dignity and beneficence of mechanical skill and 
labor, the blessedness of charity, the equality, the help- 
fulness, the magnificent power of association. It is, in- 
deed, a significant name — the Massachusetts Charitable 
Mechanics' Association. While not alone, indeed, of your 
society, yet of it with rare fitness it may be said that its 
history and its work are typical of the history and the 
work of the Commonwealth herself. Like all her inter- 
ests, it has grown beyond its own limits and lifted every 
other department of industry and education along with 



CHARITABLE MECHANICS. 43 

itself. Like her it has grown in purse, in power, in scope. 
Like her it has, in the very unfolding of its own good 
purposes, risen above consiaerations of profit, of benefit 
to an exclusive class and to limited interests, and has 
aimed at the welfare of a state, at the diffusion of that 
practical scientific knowledge and mechanical appliance 
which make the homes of a whole people happier and 
brighter, and especially at the development of manhood 
and character throughout all the ranks of industrial labor. 

I know no words that fitly speak the debt which Mas- 
sachusetts owes to the voluntary contributions and efforts 
of her children in these numberless lines of good works, 
— of charity, religion, enterprise, and of associated capi- 
tal, and skill, and labor, and sentiment even, which, more 
than her magistrates, her laws, and her police, constitute 
the government of her people, and are her security and 
impulse. Touch such a society anywhere in its ordinary 
work and meetings, or at its splendid exhibitions, and lo ! 
it is only the Massachusetts idea — the school, the church, 
the militia, the town - meeting — education ; the higher 
life ; the weak protected by the strong ; equal rights ! 

Even such, to-day, in laying the corner-stone of your 
new and magnificent exposition building, are stiU the 
breadth and generosity of your outlook. How marvelous 
it is ! Was it a dream or some fairy tale, — the massing 
of the clouds, as we have seen them at sunset, — the solid 
land rising from the sea, and graceful towers and palaces 
of gold and precious stones taking shape and shining afar, 
brilliant as the gorgeous hangings of the sun at close of 
day, and, alas ! vanishing as quickly ? But no dream or 
fairy tale is here. After years of homely, honest toil and 
saving, the sea has indeed been filled uj), and where the 
tide once ebbed and flowed is now the solid land, bearing 



44 CHAEITABLE MECHANICS. 

on its ample back the homes, the shops, the schoolhouses, 
the churches of a great city. To these you add your own 
splendid and spacious temple. If it were for you, if it 
were for your association, even if it were for the great 
industries you represent, and for these alone, it were 
hardly worth while that you should honor the laying of 
its foundations. But it is for the commonwealth, which 
means for all the world, for the bettering of all human 
conditions, for the enlargement of all human enjoyment 
and knowledge. Eloquence will lend a silver echo, and 
music its sweeter tones to its walls. Art will hang them 
with pictures. Great engines will lift their giant arms to 
its roof in mute and absolute obedience to man's mastery 
of force, and so teach the might and immortality of mind. 
Great themes of state will gather within its doors the con- 
course of the people. Schools of design will adorn it 
with their tracings and figures. Its exhibitions will illus- 
trate the limitless ingenuity of human skill, and the lim- 
itless invention of human thought. It will teach, it will 
refine, it will inspire, it will associate, it will tie closer the 
common bonds of human sympathy, dependence, and pro- 
gress. And year by year its record will show that through 
the development of industrial mechanics, based on asso- 
ciated action and directed in the spirit of the largest char- 
ity, all men alike, whatever their fortune or circumstances, 
are getting more and more of the good things of this 
world, — alike the finer and more comfortable raiment, 
alike the better food, alike the newspaper and the book, 
alike the luscious fruit of foreign zones, alike the blessed- 
ness of light by night and heat by day, alike the opportu- 
nity and power to grow, alike the alleviations and labor- 
saving helps of science ; alike for all, the comforts and 
betterments of a larger and nobler life ! 



CHARITABLE MECHANICS. 45 

So may it be till civilization shall reach that degree of 
perfection at which, with every hand and brain usefully 
employed, with the spirit of mutual helpfulness every- 
where abroad, and with all forces combined for the com- 
mon good, the whole commonwealth shall be . only one 
great Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. 
Erect your building in that spirit, and dedicate it to the 
Infinite Mind, from whom cometh that inspiration that 
makes man thus master of his necessities by making him 
the master of the world, and you will have set up in 
this city, amid these sacred spires that mark the houses 
of God, yet another temple to His praise grander in its 
simplicity of usefulness than Greek or Gothic ! And upon 
its altars shall be offered up to Him, not the smoking sac- 
rifice of the blood of bullock or goat, but the intelligent 
industries, the touching suggestions of home, the benefi- 
cent helps, the myriad evidences of the unbounded pro- 
gress and charity of His children. 



ADDRESS 

At the Opening of the New England Manufacturers' and 
Mechanics' Institute Fair, Boston, August 18, 1881. 

The comprehensive speech that befits the inauguration 
of this interesting exhibition of the manufacturing and 
mechanical industries of New England, will be spoken by- 
other and more eloquent lips than my own. Mine is 
rather the formal duty, in the name of the Commonwealth 
which I represent, and in whose capital city this exhibi- 
tion is now to be held, to proclaim its opening, to thank 
the public-spirited men who have promoted it so gener- 
ously, and to welcome to it the distinguished Governors of 
the other New England States ; the various guests who 
have been bidden to this feast of labor ; the representative 
merchants, manufacturers, and mechanics, whose interests 
centre here ; the industrial classes, the product of whose 
skill makes this great hall richer than a palace of the 
Montezumas though groaning under heaps of gold ; and, 
in fine, the whole body of the people, whose civilization, 
whose wealth, whose happiness, and whose homes are all 
typed in this magnificent display of utility and beauty. 
Yet, wonderful as are its extensiveness and variety to the 
eye — suggestive as it is of material wealth ; of the hum 
of countless spindles ; of the rush of hundreds of moun- 
tain streams ; of the mute, resistless force of a thousand 
giants of steamy vapor more marvelous than those of 
the Arabian tale ; of the freighting by land and sea of 
myriad cargoes of raw material; and also of clustering 



MANUFACTURES. 47 

villages of factories and shops, in wliich that material is 
fashioned into food or clothing or shelter or decoration, 
and through which the great wealth of wages is distributed 
into home and church and school and into the interests 
and relaxations of common social life — suggestive as it is 
of all this material activity, it suggests yet far more the 
spirit that animates it all, the eternal spring of human 
genius that thus expands outward and upward to master 
the very globe, and the immortality of the growth of 
mind. 

Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago the colonies of 
New England met in this Boston town to form a union for 
defense and common protection. Here to-day they meet 
again, in the persons of their Governors and representa- 
tive men of business, fearful no more of neighboring or 
foreign foe, eager not to avert by common array the 
perils of invading war, but to stimulate by common enter- 
prise the industries and arts of peace. Fellow citizens of 
New England, those are our Olympic games. Here we 
rub out, if any vestige of it indeed be left, the churlish- 
ness of the provincialism of boundary lines. Here we 
learn that there is no political state, except the common 
prosperity and happiness of all. Here we cultivate that 
patriotism which means the common good. Here we find 
that our interests are all woven into one ; and that, as 
commerce thrives, as manufacture plies its skillful hand, 
as labor is employed, as capital casts its bread upon the 
waters to find it after many days, so year by year with ac- 
celerating swiftness come accumulating upon our country, 
and upon all it bears or adopts, a finer life, new resources 
for body and mind, a literature wider spread, the works 
of science and philosophy in the shepherd's hands, the 
canal-boy's dream realized in a throne founded upon the 



48 MANUFACTURES. 

suffrages and in the hearts of a free people. Yes, these 
are our Olympic games ; but the races we run are of the 
head and not of the feet ; the wrestling-matches are not 
of human sinews, but of the forces of nature grappling, 
under the direction of human skill, with the fibres of the 
field, with the inertia of ores, with wood and stone, not to 
fling them to the earth, but to raise and train them into a 
million hand-servants of usefulness and luxury ; and the 
prize is not a fading olive wreath, but that perfection of 
blessings, that dream of all other lands and lots, — a New 
England home. 

In the cause, therefore, of a common advancing material 
prosperity, and yet even more in the cause of patriotism, 
of education, of a community of the highest interests, and 
of the intellectual and moral good of the people, I wel- 
come you all to this New England Manufacturers' and 
Mechanics' Institute. I trust it will inure to an in- 
creased activity and development of our manufacturing 
and mechanical interests ; that it will stimulate enterprise, 
production, and the investment of caj)ital here at home ; 
that it will aid to preserve and also to increase the supre- 
macy of New England in the field of skilled labor and in- 
dustrial and fine art ; and that, because of it, our water- 
courses will turn new wheels ; our deserted farms bloom 
afresh ; our hillside villages spring to new life ; our young 
men and women look not abroad for employment; the 
magnificent industrial capacities of Maine and New 
Hampshire find their fulfillment ; the verdure of the Ver- 
mont mountains reflect yet richer farms ; the industries of 
Rhode Island and Connecticut advance even upon their 
already marvelous thrift. I am sure it will tend to in- 
struct the public mind, to refine the public taste, to lighten 
for aU the drudgery of toil, to encourage the decoration of 



MANUFACTURES. 49 

homes, and to mould to finer touches the art of the people's 
living. 

And now for the more comprehensive word that befits 
this inauguration day of the exhibition. It should come 
from one whose information grasps the material interests, 
not only of New England but of the Union ; who is 
familiar not only with manufactures and mechanics but 
with commerce and trade, and whose researches extend 
also to that older and nobler science, the reverent culture 
of the soil itself. It would be well, too, we think, that he 
should be one who, holding some national charge allied to 
aU these pursuits, can speak the broad and unsectional 
word, which embraces the welfare of the whole American 
people, and welds their sympathies as well as their inter- 
ests closer together. If to these qualities we can add the 
orator's voice and port, his elegance of declamation, and 
his copious thought and power of illustration, we shall 
lack nothing. And nothing certainly do we lack ; for I 
now have the pleasure of presenting to you the fitly-chosen 
speaker of the day — the Hon. George B. Loring, Com- 
missioner of Agriculture of the United States. 



WELCOME 

To THE National Conference of Charities in the Hall of 
THE House of Representatives, Boston, July 28, 1881. 

I AM grateful for the courtesy which accords to me the 
pleasure of sincerely though briefly welcoming the Na- 
tional Conference of Charities to Massachusetts. Espe- 
cially so far as its delegates come from outside her own 
borders and represent other jurisdictions, our Common- 
wealth is glad of an opportunity to greet them, to exhibit 
to them her public institutions, and to receive instruction 
from them in the science of charity and correction. You 
have met together in Boston, her political, social, and com- 
mercial capital. This is her State House, in which sat 
Andrew, Horace Mann, and Dr. Howe, — names forever 
associated with those causes of humanity, education, and 
charity in which you are engaged, and to which she has 
never been disloyal. As you entered the hall below, you 
saw the battle-flags of her regiments, there sacredly pre- 
served as mementoes, not so much of fraternal strife as of 
that healthier, freer, and nobler union, in behalf of which 
they were borne by her sons to victory. The chamber in 
which you sit is that in which the popular branch of her 
General Court meets less to make laws than to hear all 
causes of grievance, reform, and progress, and especially to 
promote the general advance of that science to which you 
give specific study. I should misrepresent her if in any 
trite commonplaces of provincial pride I boasted of her 
correctional and charitable institutions, to the inspection 



NATIONAL CHARITIES. 51 

of which she cordially invites your criticism and sugges- 
tion quite as much as your praise, except perhaps in this, 
that they are absolutely exempt from political entangle- 
ment. For at least to this height she has attained, that in 
all this matter she values her edifices and appointments, 
her officers and managers as nothing compared with the 
best care and true welfare of those dependents, afflicted 
by ills of body or of mind, or even by crime, who are her 
wards. And to this also, that she recognizes any gain she 
may have made in the science of charity and correction as 
only elementary, and but the threshold of the future, and 
so will thank you for any inspiration or enlightenment 
that will help her onward. And yet, how great a gain it 
has been, and what satisfaction it affords and justifies, 
when she compares the present with the past, — the sepa- 
rate prison for women, a very asylum and house of refor- 
mation ; the state prison with its greatly increased popu- 
lation, yet its at once lighter and more perfect discipline, 
and its riddance of nearly all the old varieties of degrad- 
ing punishments ; the state j)rimary school, a healthy and 
happy avenue through which the little pauper children of 
the state go speedily forth to homes ; the more humane and 
less restraining treatment of the insane ; the education 
even of the idiot ; the giving of ears to the deaf, a tongue 
to the dumb, and sight to the blind ! Nor let me, in in- 
viting your attention to the charities of Massachusetts, 
fail to assure you how much of whatever good has re- 
sulted from them is due to private enterprise and contri- 
bution ; how much has been accomplished by the forceful 
and telling unity of purpose and action, which has come 
from the consolidation of these private and local benefi- 
cences into county organizations, auxiliary boards, and 
what in Boston is termed the Associated Charities ; and 



52 NATIONAL CHAEITIES. 

especially how in our Commonwealth the women have 
come to the front, not only with their sympathies, which 
are always alive, but with the brightest business tact and 
administrative ability. 

The causes in behalf of which you meet appeal so 
touchingly to the best sentiments of the human heart, 
that these spring to the lips for utterance at the very 
thought of your coming together — at the very sight of 
so much intelligence and human kindness converging 
from all quarters of the land, representing its centres of 
need and of public spirit, and gathering to deliberate upon 
still better methods by which to relieve misery, to cure 
infirmities, to stimulate self-respect and self-support. 
And yet, fortunately for the poor, the insane, the crimi- 
nal, you meet as a matter, not of sentiment, but of science 
and practical and economic work. That certainly is the 
true charity, most just alike to the state and to the bene- 
ficiary, which puts him above the patronage and emascu- 
lation of alms, and in the way of self-support. That is 
the true correction which brings home to the criminal the 
conviction that the wages of honest labor are better than 
the wages of sin. The problem is easy to state, but 
almost too intricate to solve, for the field on which you 
enter is as illimitable as the needs and frailties of hu- 
manity. Your work is one which is never accomplished, 
which is always expanding, and the success of which is 
never found in any resting-places of final results, but in 
the constancy of new demands and further progress. With 
the increase of immigration, the rapid growth of cities, 
the tumorous excrescences alike of wealth and poverty, 
and the inroads of ignorance into even the older and 
more advanced states, the problem is never solved, its 
intricacies only shift. In welcoming you, therefore, let 



NATIONAL CHARITIES. 53 

me also in the name of the Commonwealth, and of her 
unfortunate, her poor and infirm in mind and body, to 
whose bettering your session wiU be devoted, thank you 
for what you have done and are doing. The state must 
always needs move slowly, and your inquiries and obser- 
vations are the best forerunner of its legislation. The 
myriad fingers of private benevolence and activity meet 
the necessities which spring like weeds, yet lose half their 
value if not directed by the best intelligence and coopera- 
tion. What is impulse and misdirection, it is yours to 
organize into steady principles and forces. To you we 
look for fresh methods of staying pauperism, so that we 
shall not have it to maintain; of preventing intemper- 
ance, so that we shall not have its intolerable and degrad- 
ing burden to bear ; of reforming the criminal, so that we 
shall not have him to punish. And for your part in all 
this perpetually recurring, yet always advancing work, I 
only represent the gratitude of the people when I thank 
you and wish for you in this conference and all your en- 
deavors successful and illuminating progress. It is for 
me not to make any specific observations, but only to 
extend to you this general word of greeting. You have 
come to Massachusetts at the time of her summer glory. 
Those of you who come from the interior of the coun- 
try will miss the boundlessness of your prairies and 
wheat-fields ; but you will find the cool shadows of woods 
and hills, and will taste the fresh and salty breath of the 
sea. And be assured, to whatever she has, whether of 
natural beauty, of historical associations, or of social sci- 
ence, Massachusetts cordially welcomes you, alike for 
your own sake and for that of the enlightened and public- 
spirited constituencies you represent, and especially be- 
cause you are of those of whom it has been said, Blessed 
is he that considereth the poor. 



EESPONSE 

For the Commonwealth at the Centennial Dinner of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society, Music Hall, Boston, 
June 8, 1881. 

I AM sure, Mr. President and members of the Massa- 
cliusetts Medical Society, that one of the fundamental 
though unwritten laws of the Commonwealth is a sound 
mind in a sound body. A hundred years ago last Octo- 
ber she provided for the former by adopting the consti- 
tution under which her institutions of piety, education, 
and progress have thriven from that day to this ; and a 
year later, and nearly a hundred years ago, in order to 
promote the latter she incorporated the Massachusetts 
Medical Society over the broad sign manual of her first 
governor, and put the lives and limbs of her citizens into 
its perilous keeping. I say perilous not altogether lightly, 
recalling the reference you have just made, sir, to a " cen- 
tury of medicine," the very thought of which almost 
necessitates the attendance of a physician. And besides, 
you celebrate to-day a centennial not more of original 
beneficence than of constant progress out of error and 
ignorance into truth and knowledge. Of all the profes- 
sions, that of medicine, I take it, is the most ex]3erimental 
and tentative, — a consideration, by the way, which is 
very delightful for the scientist, but of somewhat doubtful 
comfort to the patient, in spite of the remark which Dr. 
Williams has just made, that its operations are performed 
so " quickly, safely, and pleasantly." During the century 



THE DOCTORS. 55 

the common law has scarce taken a step. The pulpit has 
but amplified, not always successfully, the Sermon on the 
Mount. But without knowing anything about it — may 
it be long before I do know anything about it — I gather 
that medicine has made its splendid advance by forgetting 
and discarding its yesterdays. Of all the sciences, this, 
then, shordd be, as it is, a liberal science ; and, while it 
gains so powerfully from such an organization as yours, it 
will take care to escape the one danger that attends all 
organizations, — the danger of limitation, — a danger 
which, however, in the broadening light of day, ought to 
cause little apprehension. 

The Commonwealth, therefore, cordially responds with 
good wishes for the health and long life of this, which is 
one of its oldest and most beneficent incorporations. As 
your toast suggests, medicine and politics go well to- 
gether, though in each case I doubt not it is much pleas- 
anter to administer than to take the dose. There is cer- 
tainly no better or more adroit politician than the doctor. 
And both medicine and politics are learning in the art of 

cure one that it is better to recognize nature, let her 

have her head, not irritate her, but keep her well fed and 
in the line of her own direction ; the other that it is bet- 
ter and just as easy to recognize not the worst but the 
best sentiment of the people and let them alone as far as 
possible, only seeing to it that they have a fair chance, 
good training and education, equal rights, and, of all 
things else, pure air, pure water, and, especially within 
ten miles of Boston, good drainage. If medicine gave 
the name of Warren to Massachusetts, she in turn gave 
it to the country and to history, and has forever engraved 
it on the loftier heights ; and she rejoices that after the 
lapse of a hundred years it is still one of the most prom- 



56 THE DOCTORS. 

ising upon her roll. Nor did Warren more patriotically 
devote his life to the cause of patriotism than your own 
associates gave theirs from 1861 to 1865, who were in every 
command of the war, and on whom its horrors and ghastly 
spectacles fell all unrelieved. But your chief significance, 
after all, to the great body of the people of the Common- 
wealth, all of whom and not a part of whom I represent, is 
not immediately in your scientific progress, splendid as it 
has been, not so much in your patriotic and political ser- 
vices, great as those have been, but in your relation to their 
homes. In them, in the relief of pain, in the sympathy of 
attendance, in the emancipation of wife and child from 
sickness and death, in the tenderness and confidence of the 
friendship of the family doctor, you have your warmest 
hold upon their gratitude and affection. It is not for me 
to enlarge upon your broader spheres of work, or the re- 
liance placed on your judgment in the supervision and 
administration of the hosj^ital, the board of public health, 
the fight with contagion and epidemic, and the great hy- 
gienic preventions and safeguards. The Commonwealth 
appreciates it all. She recognizes what a century it has 
been of beneficent, scientific, devoted progress, to which 
my lips, inexpert in its mysteries, can only pay the tribute 
of mute but open admiration. You may have been impa- 
tient with her sometimes. She may not humor jour every 
project. She may depart from your advice now and then 
in the legislative construction of a board, or in refusing to 
apply to your branch of American industry the doctrine 
of protection ; but, taken by and large, her public senti- 
ment gives you your due, vindicates her honesty of pur- 
pose and in the main her soundness of judgment ; and she 
will stand by you for another hundred years to come, as 
she has stood by you in the hundred years gone by, in all 



THE DOCTORS. 57 

generous, onward steps, so many of wMch you have already 
taken, and so many more of which you will hereafter 
take, in the work of saving the bodies, and, so far, of 
saving the souls, of her cliildren. 



EESPONSE 

At the Banquet at Union Hall, Cambridge, Mass., on the 
Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of its Settle- 
ment, December 28, 1880. 

The conviction has been growing upon my mind of 
late, Mr. Mayor, that somehow or other the times are out 
of joint. Either my friends were indeed right when they 
said that I was too young for public place, — though I 
never heard that objection raised against my worthy pre- 
decessor, John Winthrop, who was of the same age when 
he became governor, — or else everything and everybody 
have suddenly become unaccountably old. When the 
orator of the day told of the little boy, who, questioning 
him about the recent civil war in which he bore so illus- 
trious a part, asked him if he was at the battle of Bunker 
Hill, it did not surprise me. My only wonder is that he 
did not suspect Colonel Higginson of having been in the 
Pequot War, or even of being the redoubtable Miles 
Standish himself. Hardly an event has there been during 
the short term of my administration that was not from 
an hundred to two hundred and fifty years old ; and last 
week, at Plymouth, the occasion ran even ten years be- 
yond that. If the thing goes much farther, I shall feel 
like wearing silver buckles and a ruffle, and putting iron 
pots on the heads of my staff, which would add little to 
the thickness of their skulls, but much to the improve- 
ment of their personal appearance. How delightful it 
would be, and how refreshing, if for a moment we could 



CAMBRIDGE. 59 

only turn from the past, and, looking into the future, cel- 
ebrate in advance the five hundredth anniversary of the 
incorporation of Cottage City, or the violent annexation 
of the best part of Belmont to the city of Cambridge ! 
It would give us such an admirable opportunity, which 
we should certainly improve, of dwelling upon our own 
services, our sacrifices, our virtues, which I dare say are 
grander than any which have gone before, and upon the 
simplicity and excellence of our magistrates, the dignity 
of our mayors and executive councilors, the stern but 
salutary government of our colleges, the quiet demeanor of 
our boys, and the repressed and sombre lives of our young 
women. How charming it would be to mouse out the 
musty manuscript of the oration of one Colonel Higgin- 
son, veteran of a great war and then in the militia service 
of Massachusetts, and whose quaint conceits and honest 
boasts of the civilization of his day would certainly be 
pardonable in one who had only the education and advan- 
tages of the nineteenth century, but whose pure, though 
antiquated, eloquence would go far to show that there 
were giants also in those days ! I am not certain that, 
had our ancestors anticipated these anniversaries, they 
would not have most carefully concealed the dates of these 
early settlements, and so have spared their descendants 
the infliction of being compelled to hear, and, what is 
infinitely sadder, my friends, being compelled to speak, 
these conventional anniversary addresses. 

But seriously, Mr. Maj^or, having been present at many 
similar occasions, I can most truly say here, what I have 
most truly said at all the rest of them, that nowhere is 
there such a wealth of historic interest ; nowhere such a 
succession of significant events ; nowhere such elements of 
high, sterling character ; nowhere such enterprise, faith, 



60 CAMBRIDGE. 

courage, devotion ; nowhere such love and appreciation of 
learning, and such contribution to its diffusion, as in the 
early history of the time and place which you now cele- 
brate. Comprehensive and conciliatory as that statement 
is, it is yet the simple truth. Each of these anniversaries 
we do well to celebrate by oration and banquet, by peal 
of bells and roar of cannon, by the presence of citizen 
men and women, by strains of music and decorations of 
halls, and by the spirited songs of children who bring 
their impressible minds to have photographed upon them 
the glory and goodness of the past. For each of them is 
a type of all the rest, and all pay common tribute to a 
common origin, a common ancestry, and a common train- 
ing, to which we are all alike indebted. If there is a con- 
tinual glitter through the whole year, it is because, all 
around her coronet, Massachusetts is studded thick with 
jewels. 

With you it may well be your pride that it is light and 
honor and growth all the way down in one broadening 
path, from the beginning till this day. When your orator 
rose this afternoon it seemed to me his only burden was 
his embarrassment of riches. How well he bore that bur- 
den those who were present and listened to him can bear 
witness. Winthrop and Dudley were in at your birth. 
The sacred name of the apostle John Eliot, still worthily 
honored, is associated with the history of a portion of 
your ancient town. With Cambridge is hallowed in every 
heart and every memory the establishment of that little 
college, which has now become, in this your city, the 
most famous university in America. And where learn- 
ing is, there religion, patriotism, and poetry also take 
root. From here Hooker went to found a pious city. 
Upon these greens the American army was drawn up. 



CAMBRIDGE. 61 

Under these elms Washington drew his sword and took 
command. Along these highways marched Putnam, 
Stark, Green, and those other heroes, at the bare mention 
of whose names — so tender is always the Revolutionary 
memory — the heart stirs to patriotic tears quite as much 
as it stirs with patriotic pride. On your shores landed 
that flaunting detachment of British soldiers, which, after 
their memorable march to Lexington and Concord, came 
back with broken ranks and trailing colors. Here is the 
house of Lowell ; this is the birthplace of Holmes, whose 
wit and song and story and talk are that very health, the 
promotion of which has been his humbler and every-day 
calling. And here lives Longfellow, to apply to whom 
any descriptive praise except to call him poet is to show 
what is the poverty on my tongue of that language which 
in his moulding is only the potter's clay of grace and 
beauty and tenderness. Here, too, was the volunteering — 
history again repeating itself — of your best blood and 
bravest patriotism in the last great fight for liberty and 
miion. 

But it is not for me to attempt an enumeration of names 
and events which could only be an injustice by reason of 
its meagreness. Nor may I refer to my own memories of 
Cambridge ; or to my first sight of its towers, one morn- 
ing in June, so near the dawn that even the " hourlies " 
were not yet up and running, when at fourteen years of 
age, going to my college entrance examination, I walked 
all the way from Boston, keeping the right-hand side of 
Main Street, every inch of which is blistered into my 
memory to this day ; or to the later hour when I sat cry- 
ing in utter homesickness on the western steps of Gore 
Hall. That was certainly two hundred and fifty years 
ago, and the hearts that throbbed most at such a poor 
matter as my boyish heart-break are long since at rest. 



62 CAMBRIDGE. 

I said a broadening path of growth. That is true. 
Venerable and honorable as is the past, our faces should 
be set toward the future. It is to the future that Massa- 
chusetts, always alert and progressive, points her finger. 
If she reveres and honors the time gone by, as you revere 
and honor it to-day, it is only that she may be stimulated 
to better work in the time to come. We would not go 
back if we could. To do so would be to sleep like Rip 
Van Winkle, and wake to find that the world had swept 
by us, and out of sight, our garments out at elbow and 
our muskets crumbling. We may not have improved 
much, as we certainly have not, upon the purpose, the 
spirit, the moral force, the ultimate aim for self and 
for those who were to come after, which distinguished 
our fathers ; but the expression, the appointments, the 
methods, are a thousand times better. Religion is still 
the same, but its garment of doctrine and formula has 
been renewed more than once. Character is still the man ; 
but education, which is his fingers and his safeguard, has 
extended till it commands every spring and force of 
nature, and every avenue of intelligence and science. Our 
food is better, our clothing is better, our health is better, 
our books, our homes, our enjoyments are all better. Our 
children are healthier, and life is more worth living to-day 
than it was then. Let us, however, not forget that if it is 
so it is because the germ was in the early soil, and because 
our fathers, who planted it and nurtured it, were true to 
themselves and true to us. Therefore let us honor their 
memories, and let us hand down to those who shall come 
after us the opportunity and the purpose for a gain and a 
growth greater than our own. There is one word that 
sums it all, and that word is progress ; that word is 
Massachusetts; that word is every human soul, every 



CAMBRIDGE. 63 

home, every town within her borders ; that word, emphati- 
cally, is this your beautiful and classic, your ancient and 
famous city of Cambridge, this graceful cluster of homes 
upon the bauks of the Charles, this sparkling gem upon 
the fair forehead of the Commonwealth. 



KESPONSE 

At the Dinner of the Oxford Bears, at Gilbert's Hall, 
Portland, Maine, May 27, 1885. 

I CONFESS, Mr. Chairman, that too often called, as I am, 
to these festival occasions, yet I was downright glad to get 
an invitation to this one. If there was ever a thorough- 
going provincial, if there was ever a native of the fields 
that was loyal to rural life, if ever a bear went out of 
rugged Oxford County that never lost his sweet tooth for 
her honey, I claim to share in that distinction. Did not, 
Mr. Emery, your father and mine interchange their rhym- 
ing muses over the hills of Paris and Buckfield ? Was I 
not born in one of Oxford's nestling cradles, in a village 
lovelier than sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, 
— in a happier valley than the Abyssinian seclusion of 
Easselas, — by the side of one of Oxford's streams, whose 
music sang me, a child, to sleep, and has sung in my 
dreams ever since, — under the exquisite elms that are 
the grace of her landscape, — and among the fairest hills 
that ever broke the golden sunsets of the west or lifted 
the luxuriant foliage of a Maine summer ? Did not " old 
Streaked " teach my youth the glory of the mountains as 
well as feed me with the nutritious and wholesome blue- 
berry ? Did I not graduate at Hebron Academy, and do 
I not recall that temple of learning as the most imposing 
architectural pile and spire that ever awed a schoolboy ? 
Was it not there I stammered my first declamation, and 
in a very still, small voice thundered Cicero's question to 



OXFORD COUNTY. 65 

Catiline, demanding how long he proposed to abuse our 
patience? Was it not at Hebron that the song of the 
frogs and the glow of the fire-fly associated themselves 
forever in the mind of a homesick lad with a tender mel- 
ancholy which to this day they never fail to revive, little 
as you would suspect it from my personal appearance ? 
Was it not of his poverty-stricken term at Hebron that 
my father wrote to me, referring to his own struggles in 
lines which I recall : — 

" How I was poor and lame and lean, 
Wore homespun clothes of bottle green ; 
Your grandsire's weddmg coat resigned, 
Turned inside out and patched behind ; 
My brother Tom's old vest of blue 
Five summers after it was new. 
And how I traveled to recite 
Two miles at morning, two at night, 
Because I could not then afford 
To pay the price of nearer board. 
Or people nearer did not choose 
To take their pay in making shoes." 

Why, sir, Oxford County to me is a volume of poems, 
a paradise of nature. Her crests of blue against the 
summer sky, and in winter white with glistening snow, 
her pure waters, her cool woods, her picturesque roads 
winding over hill and down dale, her exquisite intermin- 
gling of forest and farm, are such a natural park of love- 
liness and magnificence as no metropolitan wealth or art 
can ever imitate. 

For one, I owe it a deeper debt. Enlarging and edu- 
cating as were its physical influences, I pay my tribute 
still more gratefully to the living influences of its people. 
In American life and struggle, I believe there is no such 
education as that of a country boy's contact in school and 



QQ OXFORD COUNTY. 

at all times with the social democracy of a country such 
as Oxford County typifies, — absolutely meeting the ideal 
of a free and equal people, and ignorant of such a thing 
as caste or class. 

Add to such a democracy the elements of the education 
of the common schools, the unfettered exercise of religious 
freedom, the popular political discussion of the street 
corner, the store, and the hay-field, the frequent vacancies 
of leisure, the common knowledge of men and things, 
the sj^lendid ingrained inheritance of English common 
law ripened into the maxims, habits, converse, and system 
of the people, the absence on the one hand of great ac- 
cumulations of wealth, and on the other of any conscious- 
ness of the deprivations of extreme poverty, and especially 
that unconscious unreserve and inartificiality of inter- 
course which made the hewer of stone the free and easy, 
if not superior, disputant as well as companion of the 
owner of the field, — add all these, and you have an 
atmosphere of education, out of which no boy could 
emerge and not have a fitting for future life such as the 
metropolis with its schools, the university with its colleges, 
could not give, a homely familiarity with the popular 
mind, an inbred sympathy with the masses, not artificial 
or assumed, but a jDart of character itself, and a helpful 
agency in public service and in useful conduct in life. 
Its fruits you see to-day, and for years have seen, in the 
elements which from rural counties like Oxford have gone 
into the busy avenues of our national life and given enter- 
prise, growth, success to the business, the government, the 
literature, and the progress of our country. 

Yes, my friends, I believe we are here to utter our grat- 
itude to the men and women who gave a popular tone to 
Oxford County worthy of her hills and the grandeur and 



OXFORD COUNTY. 67 

strength of her physical magnificence. My gratitude is 
from a full heart. I recognize with profound emotion 
the resolute, generous, and fruitful purpose and force 
which our fathers put into their farms and water-courses 
and trading-posts. I look back and behold worth and 
highmindedness driving the oxen afield, cutting the wood, 
tending the sawmill, leading the training field and the 
election, doing neighborly turns and kindnesses, barter- 
ing the worsted mitten over the counter, and making the 
wholesomest texture of a pastoral, provincial life the 
world has ever seen or ever will see, — the ideal combina- 
tion of industry, equality, freedom, intelligence, and high 
character. We talk nowadays of poverty ; we pity our 
city full of poor ; we create and foster our associated 
charities. And yet you have among you in this great 
city hardly a family so scanty in their means, so comfort- 
less in their homes, — thanks to the inventions, improve- 
ments, and distributions of modern times, — as the pioneers 
of Oxford County less than a hundred years ago. We 
little realize the rapid spread of those means of making 
life easier, which of later years have given to the poorest 
hearth comforts which then the richest did not dream of. 
It was the best blood of Massachusetts — pure English 
stock, little changed even to this day, the best families of 
Pilgrim and Puritan descent — which after the Revolution- 
ary war made their way to Oxford County. But like all 
pioneers, they had little of this world's goods, and brought 
little except their splendid inheritance of worth and char- 
acter, their brave hearts and honest, hardworking hands. 
How illustrative of all this straitened circumstance is the 
story of that half fisherman and half shoemaker, pestered 
by debt, and at last selling his little farm in the mother 
commonwealth, and with his wife and brood of children, 



68 OXFORD COUNTY. 

his kit of tools and scanty household furniture, sailing by 
packet from Plymouth to Salem, and thence journeying 
overland in a pioneer's wagon, which held all he had, a 
hundred and fifty miles into the uplands of Oxford County, 
Maine, in 1806. How often my father, God bless him, 
has told me of their arrival at the foot of the mile-long 
hill, at the top of which was the journey's end, with its 
half-finished house and half-cleared farm ; of himself, six 
years old, and his older brother, running barefoot ahead 
of tlie team to get the first glimpse of their future home, 

— a cheerless enclosure of boards, but to them a paradise, 

— stopping now and then to pick the thistles from their 
hardy little feet. There is a famous picture painted by a 
French artist called the First Arrival. It represents a lofty 
cliff overlooking a landscape of the richest luxuriance, and 
itself affluent with vines and sunshine. On it are the 
crumblino: walls of an ancient castle that even in its ruins 
suggests the pomp and circumstance of wealth and power. 
A gay party of youths and maidens have clambered up to 
look at it and from it. Foremost, the first to arrive is a 
beautiful girl, richly dressed, herself a flushed dream of 
loveliness, a child of opulence and luxury, who for one 
bright summer morning spices the ennui of satiety with a 
fresh touch of nature and the pure breath of the moun- 
tain air. It is a rare picture, and yet I wish some artist 
might draw, as I in imagination can see, that poor, ragged, 
barefooted boy who had never a luxury of food or cloth- 
ing or amusement, whose bare feet were pricked with 
thistles, who climbed that Oxford hill, and who, though he 
looked not on baronial castles or landscapes luxuriant with 
vines, yet thrilled with a New England boy's pride in his 
father's freehold, and with a New England boy's prophetic 
unconsciousness, if I may so say, of a chance and a future 



OXFORD COUNTY. 69 

for him also in the world, as well as for the most favored 
child of fortune — for him a Latin grammar, though a bor- 
rowed one ; for him an entrance into the academy, though 
but for a single term ; for him a place in the community and 
a claim on its respect and honor ; and for him the means to 
give his own children the opportunities of education and 
learning which had been denied himself. Pardon me if I 
recall this and the universal hardships of those days, — 
the great families of children, the narrow means, — even 
the neighborly lending and borrowing from the scanty 
pork barrel, the footings knit of winter nights to buy 
the comfort now and then of groceries from the village 
store, the rude unfinished house round which the snow- 
blast howled, the green wood drawn from the night's 
snowdrift and cut and split to make the morning fire on 
the open hearth, the coarse, plain, unvaried fare, the long, 
hard, poorly paying journeys to distant markets, the stress 
of debt, the tugging strain of years to turn the woodland 
into tillage, — and yet running through all this toil and 
privation and hardship an infinite cheer and humor, and 
also the courage, the Pilgrim earnestness, the religious 
faith, the love of family and country, the hope and sacrifice 
for children, the inborn instinct of the freeholder, which 
redeemed and glorified all else, and to-day command our 
respect and pride as the qualities of no other ancestry 
could. If it was poverty, it was not the poverty of de- 
pendence or charity or disparagement in any form, but 
poverty with independence and pride, living within such 
means as were its own, and finding enough even at that 
with which to build the church and the academy, to 
keep the law, to have the schoolmaster, to buy a book, to 
get the contents of the newspaper, to understand the ele- 
ments of constitutional and common law, to vote honestly 



70 OXFORD COUNTY. 

and intelligently, to go to the legislature, to discuss in 
town meeting the affairs of town and state and country, 
and to fill out the full measure of the enlightened citizen 
of the republic. 

I do not forget that there were other and very marked 
shadings of the picture, but this was the sort of men who 
were most distinctive of Oxford County, and who gave it 
character. What splendid stock it was ! What sturdy 
English names, — those Mitchells, Lincolns, Holmeses, 
Lorings, Emerys, Parsons, Taylors, Cushings, Halls, 
Bicknells, Perrys, Washburns, Hamlins, Aldens, Mortons, 
Whitmans, and hundreds more ! Hardly a family, how- 
ever hard its fight with adverse circumstances, that has 
not been a contributor to the enterprise, the scholarship, 
the statesmanship, the patriotism, that have made our 
country great. 

In every avenue of its usefulness you find their trace. 
You hear their eloquence in every court and congress. 
You saw the flash of their swords in every battle for free- 
dom. Well may we recall the men of Oxford with pride 
and gratitude. No narrow scope was theirs. They nursed 
the schools. They valued and exemplified and maintained 
the education of the people. They contended for good 
politics. They discussed fundamental issues. Could you 
awake the voices of the past you would hear them also 
treat of reform, of tariff and revenue, and of the relations 
of the general government to its local components, with 
all the vigor and enlightenment which we sometimes think 
to be the exclusive attainment of our own time. 

I thank you, sir, for permitting me to join with you in 
your tribute to Oxford. The occasion touches me very 
tenderly, for it carries my heart and betrays my utter- 
ance into sacred memories of my own boyhood and home. 



OXFORD COUNTY. Tl 

They come fresUy back to me, as yours to you, and I 
stand again at the threshold of an opening world, with the 
sunrise on my face. Again I sit at the blessed family 
fireplace as of old, unthinking then of the love and fer- 
vent devotion to my welfare and advancement to which I 
owe everything, and which to me now, looking back, is all 
so clear. I knew not then that angels' wings brushed my 
cheeks. Now I strain my eyes to heaven to catch their 
flight. 



OEATION 

Before the Grand Army Posts of Suffolk County at Tre- 
MONT Temple, Boston, May 30, 1882. 

I GRATEFULLY acknowledge your courtesy, veterans 
and members of the Suffolk posts of the Grand Army, in 
inviting me, a civilian, to speak for you this day. I should 
shrink frOm the task, however, did I not know that, in 
this, your purpose is to honor again the Commonwealth of 
which I am the official representative. By recent enact- 
ment she has made the day you celebrate one of her holy 
days, — a day sacred to the memory of her patriot dead 
and to the inspiration of patriotism in her living. Hence- 
forward, she emblazons it upon the calendar of the year 
with the consecrated days that have come down from the 
Pilgrim and the Puritan, with Christmas Day and with the 
birthdays of Washington and American Independence. 
So she commits herself afresh to the eternal foundations, 
which the fathers laid, of piety, education, freedom, jus- 
tice, law, and love of country. The time will come indeed, 
and speedily, when none of you shall remain to observe it, 
and when the last survivor, shouldering his crutch no 
more, shall lie down to rest with no comrade left to shed 
a tear or flower upon his grave. But the service you did, 
the sacrifice you made, the example you taught, more im- 
mortal than your crumbling dust, will forever live and 
illume the world, as in the heavens, speeding so far from 
us that the eye sees not the vapor that enshrouds them, 
the stars shine only in purer and eternal glory. I can un- 



MEMORIAL DAY. 73 

derstand that, when the war closed, the same disinterested 
and single loyalty, which compelled the true citizen to 
arms, made many a soldier shrink from even the appear- 
ance of farther display, either by joining your organiza- 
tion or by publicly engaging in the decoration of graves. 
But with the lapse of time, with the inroads on the ranks, 
with this statutory recognition by the commonwealth, — 
a recognition not more apt in desert than in time, — 
Memorial Day will hereafter gather around it not only 
the love and tears and pride of the generations of the 
people, but more and more, in its inner circle of tender- 
ness, the linking memories of every comrade, so long as 
one survives. As the dawn ushers it in, tinged already 
with the exquisite flush of hastening June, and sweet 
with the bursting fragrance of her roses, the wheels of 
time will each year roll back, and, lo ! John Andrew is at 
the state house, inspiring Massachusetts with the throb- 
bing of his own great heart ; Abraham Lincoln, wise and 
patient and honest and tender and true, is at the nation's 
helm ; the North is one broad blaze ; the boys in blue are 
marching to the front ; the fife and drum are on every 
breeze ; the very air is patriotism ; Phil Sheridan, forty 
miles away, dashes back to turn defeat to victory ; Farra- 
gut, lashed to the mast-head, is steaming into Mobile Har- 
bor ; Hooker is above the clouds, — ay, now indeed for- 
ever above the clouds ; Sherman marches through Georgia 
to the sea ; Grant has throttled Lee with the grip that 
never lets go ; Richmond falls ; the armies of the republic 
pass in that last great review at Washington ; Custer's 
plume is there, but Kearney's saddle is empty ; and, now 
again, our veterans come marching home to receive the 
welcome of a grateful people, and to stack in Doric Hall 
the tattered flags which Massachusetts forever hence shall 
wear above her heart. 



74 MEMORIAL DAY. 

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for in- 
spiration to our children, we gather to-day to deck the 
graves of our patriots with flowers, to pledge common- 
wealth and town and citizen to fresh recognition of the 
surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the romance, 
the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if 
it were but yesterday, you recall him. He had but turned 
twenty. The exquisite tint of youthful health was in his 
cheek. His pure heart shone from frank, outspeaking 
eyes. His fair hair clustered from beneath his cap. He 
had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or walked the 
most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just 
entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his 
home at this season of the year was brilliant in the dewy 
morn with the clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in 
and out he went, the beloved of mother and sisters, and 
the ideal of a New England youth ; — 

" In face and shoiiklers Uke a god he was ; 
For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm 
Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth, 
A generous gladness in his eyes : such grace 
As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when 
Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold 
Is set." 

The unreckoned influences of the great discussion of 
human rights had insensibly moulded him into a champion 
of freedom. He had passed no solitary and sleepless 
night watching the armor which he was to wear when 
dubbed next day with the accolade of knighthood. But 
over the student's lamp or at the fireside's blaze he had 
passed the nobler initiate of a heart and mind trained to 
a fine sense of justice and to a resolution equal to the 
sacrifice of life itself in behalf of right and duty. He 



MEMORIAL DAY. 75 

knew nothing of tlie web and woof of politics, but he 
knew instinctively the needs of his country. His ideal 
was Philip Sidney, not Napoleon. And when the drum 
beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of 
Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went for- 
ward. You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters 
to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped in his 
very heart. How novel seemed to him the routine of ser- 
vice, the life of camp and march ! How eager the wish 
to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good 
cause ! What pride at the promotion that came and put 
its chevron on his arm or its strap upon his shoulder ! 
How graphically he described his sensation in the first 
battle, the pallor that he felt creeping up his face, the 
thrilling along every nerve, and then the utter fearless- 
ness when once the charge began and his blood was up ! 
Later on, how gratefully he wrote of the days in hospital, 
of the opening of the box from home, of the generous dis- 
tributing of delicacies that loving ones had sent, and of 
the never-to-be-forgotten comfort of the gentle nurse whose 
eyes and hands seemed to bring to his bedside the summer 
freshness and health of the open windows of his and her 
New England homestead ! No Amazon was she with cal- 
lous half-breast; but her whole woman's heart was de- 
voted, as were the hearts of all her sisters at the North, to 
lightening the hardships and pain of war. Let her praise 
never fail to mingle in the soldier's tribute, or her abilities 
be belittled in a land to whose salvation and honor she 
contributed as nobly in her service as he in his. 

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and 
grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of his sufferings 
and with pity for the greater horror of the sufferings of 
his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He saw 



76 MEMORIAL DAY. 

his schoolmate panting with the fever of thirst, yet shot 
like a dog for reaching across the line to drink the stag- 
nant water a dog would have scorned. He tunneled the 
earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of recap- 
ture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. 
Upon its timbers, hoar with frost, he tottered in the dark 
over rivers that flowed deep beneath his treacherous foot- 
hold. He slept in thickets and sank in swamps. In long 
and painful circuits he stole around hamlets where he 
dared not ask for shelter. He saw the glitter of horse- 
men who pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on 
his track. A faithful negro — good Samaritan — took 
compassion on him, bound up his wounds, and set him on 
his way. He reached the line ; and, with his hand grasp- 
ing at freedom, they caught and took him back to his cap- 
tivity. He was exchanged at last ; and you remember, 
when he came home on a short furlough, how manly and 
war-worn he had grown. But he soon returned to the 
ranks and to the welcome of his comrades. They loved 
him for his manliness, his high bearing, his fine sense of 
honor. They felt the nobility of conduct and character 
that breathed out from him. They recall him now alike 
with tears and pride. In the rifle-pits around Petersburg 
you heard his steady voice and firm command. The bul- 
let of the sharp-shooter picked off the soldier who stood 
at his side and who fell dying in his arms, one last brief 
message whispered and faithfully sent home. It was a 
forlorn hope, — the charge of the brave regiment to which 
he belonged, reduced now by three years' long fighting to 
a hundred veterans, conscious that somebody had blun- 
dered yet grimly obedient to duty. Some one who saw 
him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who 
forefelt the end. But there was no flinching as he 



MEMORIAL DAY. 77 

charged. He had just turned to give a cheer when the 
fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the up- 
ward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their 
last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, 
and at nightfall lay with his face to the stars. Home 
they brought him, fairer than Adonis over whom the god- 
dess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village 
churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his com- 
rades and his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave 
with flowers. His picture hangs on the homestead walls. 
Children look up at it and ask to hear his story told. It 
was twenty years ago ; and the face is so young, so boyish 
and fair, that you cannot believe he was the hero of twenty 
battles, a veteran in the wars, a leader of men, brave, 
cool, commanding, great. Do you ask who he was ? He 
was in every regiment and every company. He went out 
from every Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every 
Massachusetts burying-ground. Recall romance, recite 
the names of heroes of legend and song, but there is none 
that is his peer. Can you think of him and not count the 
cost of such a precious life, not thrill with gratitude at 
such a sacrifice, not ask why such promise, such hope, 
such worth, should have been cut down ? I know not why 
it is that, if the future is always progress, the past is al- 
ways sacrifice, unless it be that in the nation as in the 
man sacrifice is the soil and seed of progress. I know not 
why it is in the providence of God that through blood — 
not the sacrifice of rams and goats, but the blood of hu- 
man hearts — the great gains of human freedom liave had 
their impulse, unless it be that in the laws of growth, as in 
the laws of light, it is the red rays that are strongest and 
that first shine through and flash the dawn, foretelling the 
pure white fire of the uprising sun. But this we do know : 



78 MEMORIAL DAY. 

that, search history through, and you shall find no more 
heroic record of self-sacrifice, of courage, of the flower of 
youth giving itself to death for right and country's sake. 
Massachusetts will never forget the memory of these her 
martyrs. Their lives are insensibly moulding the charac- 
ter of her children at school or by fireside even while the 
busy man of years and of affairs may almost seem to have 
forgotten them. With you she weeps over their turf and 
crowns them with the laurel wreath. 

Yes, why was it? Why do we recall all this? Be- 
cause the sacrifice is lost in the consummation, death is 
swallowed up in victory ; because it was not a nipped bud 
but the full flower, not a life cut off, but a life rounded 
and complete ; because the high ideals, the lofty purposes, 
the forward-looking ambition to be of service in the world 
were all fulfilled, not defeated, in these young men. If 
in our pride of conquest, if in these organizations and 
festivals our purpose were simply to count our excess of 
victories, to glory in superiority of endurance, strength, 
and numbers, to echo the gladiator's roar of triumph, to 
rake from the dying embers flashes of the stinging fires of 
hate, it were worse than time wasted. It was no fight of 
men with men. That is but brutality. It was the eternal 
war of right with wrong, which is divine and wreathes an 
eternal crown of glory round the brow of the conqueror. 
Our foes were not worth beating if the purpose were 
simply to beat them. But it was the chastisement of love 
that overthrew, not them, but the false gods they wor- 
shiped, the false principles they obeyed, and that gave 
to them and secured to us a union for the first time 
founded on universal freedom and equality. And so it is 
that as sometimes a brave man perils and loses his life 
that he may save that of a little child or even of a foe, so 



MEMORIAL DAY. 79 

our heroes died that all their countrymen, North and 
South, might live the only life worth living, — the life of 
free men. It would be easy to say that the late war dem- 
onstrated that we are a nation of soldiers as well as of cit- 
izens, and to paint the laurels which, in case of another, 
we could win again on sea and land. But I prefer to say 
that the result is a united country, a solid South, such as 
it soon will be, only because at last and forever solidly 
identified with the education, the business growth, the 
glowing enterprise of the North, — its common people 
taught in common schools, its vast fields open to the stim- 
ulating immigration of the globe, its great rivers turning 
the wheels of peaceful and prosperous industries, — a 
united country that counts as nothing its ability to fight 
the world, but as everything its ability to lead the world 
in the arts of peace, secure in the consciousness rather 
than in the exhibition of power, and cemented not by 
blood but by ideas. 

This is our triumph, — not that we overthrew a brave 
though ignorant, provincial, misguided foe, stunted by the 
barbarism of slavery, but that we have forever established 
in fact the principle that all men are born free and equal ; 
have destroyed the doctrine of caste; have proved the 
stability and permanence of a government of the people ; 
have consolidated our heterogeneous population and made 
them all of one birth and kin, so that the names of our 
fallen dead no longer, like those on the Lexington column, 
are all patronymics of pure New England stock, but, as 
you may now read them on the later shafts throughout 
the commonwealth, represent every nationality, each blend- 
ing in the one common destiny of the American republic. 
We have confirmed the policy of honesty in financial ad- 
ministration, of keeping good the nation's promise, and of 



80 MEMORIAL DAY. 

giving its people an honest dollar. We have struck the 
shackles from the feet of the slave and from the soul of 
his master. We have let loose the energies, the mighty 
energies of a free people, which are turning this great do- 
main into a hive of industry and prosperity, girting it 
with bands of iron rails, and disemboweling its mines of 
gold and silver and more precious ores. Best of all, we 
have emancipated the prodigal States themselves from the 
swineherd's thraldom, and put rings on their hands and 
shoes on their feet, allowing them to justly share but never 
more to domineer. It was General Greene, of our neiah- 
bor Ehode Island, who a hundred years ago led South 
Carolina to victory in the War for Independence. It was 
General Lincoln, of our own Massachusetts, who received 
the sword of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in the same good 
cause. Since then. South Carolina and Virginia, false to 
that cause, have struck their flags to the men of Rhode 
Island and Massachusetts who held them to their better 
duty. They will not repeat that mistake. Within this 
month, at the centennial celebration at Cowpens, it was 
Colonel Higginson, a representative of the Massachusetts 
Executive, who spoke for New England on the same plat- 
form with General Hampton, whose slaves, less than 
twenty years ago, the colonel had armed against this their 
master, in the cause of their own liberty. And both struck 
the same high note of freedom, of progress, of the new era 
of a higher destiny. In October next, the soldiers of the 
North will again encamp at Yorktown. But it will be to 
celebrate, not the slaughters of the Peninsula campaign, 
but the hundredth anniversary of the achievement of 
American Independence. On that day, the President of 
the Union and the representatives of every State in it wiU 
look back over the century and pay tribute to its sacri- 



MEMORIAL DAY. 81 

fices and its triumphs. But with faces on which no shadow 
will fall, they will turn anon and look forward for centu- 
ries to come upon the more glorious fraternal progress of 
the future. It has been said that it would be better to 
blot out this day and with it every recollection of the past 
it commemorates. I believe it is better to keep the day 
and to forget nothing of the past, if so on both sides we 
make the past a lesson for the future, and out of its very 
nettle of horror and danger pluck the flower of safety. 
The mere man you fought is naught, and it is indeed bet- 
ter to forgive and forget him. But the victory you won 
over him was the victory of principle, and is eternal. 
Proud may you be indeed to keep it known that you share 
and transmit its glory ; that, having as soldiers saved the 
republic, as citizens you perpetuate it ; that you recall a 
youth not lost but made immortal. Proud, too, the Com- 
monwealth of such sons ; secure in their hands alike in 
peace or war ; her motto still. The quietude of peace 

WITH LIBERTY BUT ELSE THE SWORD. 

In that Commonwealth, her very soil rich with ashes of 
heroes and giants, fitting it is that you should not limit 
the honors you bestow this day to the graves only of the 
recent dead, but should extend them to the dead who for 
two hundred and fifty years have been, by force of their 
indelible impress, the real life, transcending ours, of Mas- 
sachusetts. And fitting it is that I, echoing their senti- 
ment and yours, the sentiment that never was ungenerous 
or narrow, should speak no word that is not liberal, no 
thought that is not national, no hope of future good that 
is not as broad as our common country, or that does not 
embrace the happiness of every citizen, whatever his color 
or birth, whatever his faith or toil, whatever his section 
or estate. For we commemorate to-day not more the 



82 MEMORIAL DAY. 

heroism of the past than the common weal of the present, 
— the equality of citizenship, in honor commanding re- 
spect, in duty commanding service. 

As I look, veterans, upon your faces, your thinner ranks, 
your brows on which time is writing in plainer lines its 
autograph, true, indeed, I know it is that the number of 
the survivors is fast diminishing, and that with the close 
of the century few will remain. But they will all still 
live in the works that do follow them, — in a civilization 
better because purified by the searching fire of war from 
the dross of human slavery and political inequality, and 
in a country lifted up to a higher plane of justice, mercy, 
and righteousness. They will live, too, in history, — in 
the history of a patriotic people, pictured in pages more 
graphic than those of Plutarch or Macaulay, in the songs 
of poets who shall sing a nobler than Virgil's man, and 
an epic loftier than the Iliad. They will live, too, in 
these monuments of stone and bronze which we erect not 
more to their memory than to the incitement and educa- 
tion of coming generations. It might be said that we are 
now in our monumental age. The towering obelisk at 
Bunker Hill, the homely pillar on Lexington Green, are 
no longer the only columns that write in granite the record 
of our glory. At Plymouth, the colossal figure of Faith, 
looking out over the sea, catching from its horizon the 
first tints of the morning, and guarding the graves of the 
Pilgrims, proclaims to the world the story of the May- 
flower and its precious freight of civil and religious 
liberty. Across the bay rises almost to completion the 
plain but solid shaft that marks the home of Miles Stand- 
ish, that sturdy type of courage and independence in life 
and faith which has been multiplied in New England in 
every phase of its thought and culture. In Boston, before 



MEMORIAL DAY. 83 

the State House, Webster, defender of the Constitution, 
and Mann, the promoter of public education. Before its 
City Hall, Franklin, the most prolific and comprehensive 
brain in American history, and Quincy, a noble name in 
Massachusetts for generation after generation. In its 
public squares, Winthrop, the Puritan founder, Sam 
Adams, true leader of the people, and Abraham Lincoln, 
emancipator of the grateful race that kneels enfranchised 
at his feet. In its Public Garden, the equestrian statue 
of Father Washington, the figure of Charles Sumner, and 
the uplifted arm of Everett. And in its avenues, Hamil- 
ton, the youthful founder of our national finance, and John 
Glover, colonel of the Marblehead regiment, whose lusty 
arms and oars rescued Washington from Long Island. 
At Mount Auburn, James Otis, that flame of fire. At 
Lexington, Hancock and Adams. At Concord, the em- 
battled farmer. In Ilingham, in marble pure as his own 
heroic instincts, that war governor, who in the heart of 
the Massachusetts soldier can never be disassociated from 
the sympathies and martyrdom of the service which he 
shared with you even to his life. And now, in Chelsea, 
the national flag, floating out its bright and rippling cheer 
from the year's beginning to its end, waves over the 
Soldiers' Home, which has been secured by your contribu- 
tions, so that if haply there be one needy veteran whom 
the magnificent and unparalleled provision of Massachu- 
setts fails, as all general laws must, in some rare cases, 
fail to reach, there he may find a shelter that shall not 
dishonor him. Time and your patience would fail an 
enumeration of the monuments which, within a few years, 
have dotted the State, and in whose massive handwriting 
the century is recording for centuries hence its story of 
heroism, so plain, so legible, that though a new Babel 



84 MEMORIAL DAY. 

should arise, and the English tongue be lost, the human 
heart and eye will still read it at a glance. Scarce a 
town is there — from Boston, with its magnificent column 
crowned with the statue of America, at the dedication of 
which even the conquered Southron came to pay honor, 
to the humblest stone in rural villages — in which these 
monuments do not rise summer and winter, in snow and 
sun, day and night, to tell how universal was the response 
of Massachusetts to the call of the patriots' duty, whether 
it rang above the city's din or broke the quiet of the farm. 
On city square and village green stand the graceful figures 
of student, clerk, mechanic, farmer, in that endeared and 
never-to-be-forgotten war uniform of the soldier or the 
sailor, their stern young faces to the front, still on guard, 
watching the work they wrought in the flesh, and teach- 
ing, in eloquent silence, the lesson of the citizen's duty 
to the state. How our children will study these ! How 
they will search and read their names ! How quaint and 
antique to them will seem their arms and costume ! How 
they will gather and store up in their minds the fine, in- 
sensibly filtering percolation of the sentiment of valor, of 
loyalty, of fight for right, of resistance against wrong, 
just as we inherited all this from the Eevolutionary era, 
so that, when some crisis shall in the future come to them, 
as it came to us, they will spring to the rescue, as sprang 
our youth in the beauty and chivalry of the consciousness 
of a noble descent. 

During the late Turco-Russian war, I passed an evening 
in a modest home in a quiet country town. It was a wild 
night. The family circle sat by the open fire of a New 
England sitting-room. They told me of a son of that 
house, a young man already known in literature and art, 
who, full of the spirit of adventure, was at that moment, 



MEMORIAL DAY. 85 

as war correspondent of a great London daily, with the 
head of the Russian army in Bulgaria. They read me 
his letters, in which he interwove affectionate inquiries 
and memories of home with vivid descriptions of battles, 
of wounds, of Turkish barbarities, of desolated villages, 
of murdered and mutilated peasants, of long marches 
through worse than Virginian mud, of wild bivouac in 
rain and tempest, of stirring incidents of the Russian 
camp, of the thousand shifting scenes of the theatre of a 
campaign, till suddenly that quiet room in which we sat 
was transfigured, and we, snug-sheltered from the storm, 
were apace translated over the sea into the very stir and 
toss of the war, our sympathies, our hopes, our interests, 
our very selves all there. 

And so it is with us always. Shut up within ourselves, 
our minds intent on nothing but the narrow limits of im- 
mediate place and time, our hearts and fists closing tighter 
on our little own, we shrivel like dry leaves. But let the 
thrill of that common humanity electrify us which links 
together all men, all time past, present, and to come, and 
we spring into the upper air. When we do these honors 
to the deserving dead, when we revive not alone the fact 
but the ideal of their service, we strike a chord that forever 
binds us and the world around us with all great heroisms, 
with all great causes and sacrifices, with the throb of that 
loftier moral atmosphere which is lost only in the unison 
of man's immortal soul with the soul of God the Father. 



ADDRESS 

At a Meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, for the Relief of 
THE Sufferers in Johnstown, Pa., June 4, 1889. 

We have met in Faneuil Hall to consider, and, I trust, 
to act upon, the most appalling sudden disaster that has 
befallen any portion of the people of the United States. 
Ten thousand men, women, little children, — our country- 
men, our fellow human beings, akin to you and me by 
the passionate ties of human suffering and human sym- 
pathy, only yesterday busy and thrifty dwellers in a happy 
valley in the mountains of Pennsylvania, have been liter- 
ally swallowed up by the deluge, burned by the relentless 
flame, their homes actually blotted from the face of the 
earth, their families scattered, never to reunite, their 
charred bodies tossed broadcast or in heaps, while the 
survivors are left with broken hearts, sobbins: throuo^h 
their tears, in the agonizing search to find the dead body 
of father, or mother, or child, or little babe. Where but 
a day ago there was plenty, where there was comfortable 
shelter, where there was every provision, where honest 
labor was earning a generous return, to-day gaunt famine 
stalks, children are crying for food and seeking shelter 
from the cold and the rain ; and this paradise of labor 
has no vestige left except its own ruins and its ghastly 
population of corpses. Why, the heart gasps in speech- 
less horror at such a scene as this, which breaks upon the 
even tenor of our general national felicity. No words can 
describe it, and well it is they cannot, for the question 
now is, not what shall we say, but what shall we do. 



JOHNSTOWN. 8'^ 

As I came in it struck me that there are two great 
overwhelming feelings that come over one at such a time 
as this. One is the thought of the utter insignificance of 
this human body, this man, this pigmy creature that struts 
and frets for his hour, and yet at one convulsion of the 
dead clod on which he walks, and which he spurns under 
his foot, at one freak of those mighty natural forces which 
play with him and then in an unguarded moment tear 
him, at one breath of Almighty God, is tossed like a leaf 
and flung like an atom in a dust heap. But the next 
thought and the greater thought, thanks to the same 
Almighty power, is the significance and the value and the 
worth of the human soul. The floods and deluge may 
break their bonds and carry ruin in their track; yet 
though they devastate the valley and the hillside and re- 
move mountains, if they do but so much as touch one of 
God's little ones ; if but a sparrow of a babe do fall under 
their ruin ; if, as in a case like this, there is a holocaust 
of men and women like ourselves and like those whom we 
hold dear, then there speeds a thrill that is finer than any 
electric force which nature supplies. It is the thrill of 
the human heart. A chord, that reaches through angels' 
hearts to the heart of God himseK, is touched. Then any 
cry of human suffering, be it ever so faint, is heard above 
the roar of the mighty waters, and above the fury of the 
hissing flames; and then, too, the glad answer of relief 
is also heard echoing back in helpful response. Then it 
is that man becomes mightier than nature, because man is 
master of matter; and we are taught, as perhaps nothing 
but such an awful calamity as this could teach us, we are 
taught our common humanity, — shall I not say we are 
taught our common divinity, of course our common citi- 
zenship and brotherhood, and our common obligations to 



88 JOHNSTOWN. 

those who now are not so much our countrymen as they 
are our brothers, our sisters, in suffering. 

It is in that spirit that this meeting is called. It is in 
that spirit that you all have responded to-day. It is in 
that spirit that the men and women of good, old, generous 
Boston, heart of Massachusetts, her merchants, her work- 
ing men and women, those who have much and those who 
have little, have come together to unite to carry succor 
and sympathy and help to these sufferers at Johnstown, 
— food for the hungry, clothing for the naked, shelter 
for the homeless, and a balm for the wounds of those on 
whom the most awful calamity of the century has just 
fallen. 



RESPONSE 

At the Universalists' Social Union Banquet, at the Revere 
House, Boston, May 29, 1885. 

If any one will tell me the difference between Uni- 
versalism and Unitarianism, I shall be able, as I am not 
now, to see why I may not claim a seat at your denomina- 
tional banquet as a matter of right and of membership 
in your faith, if not in your club. Your firm name is 
a little broader and more comprehensive, — comprehen- 
sive enough, Dr. Miner will allow, to include even a poor, 
despised Republican. You have monopolized the most 
generous word in the English language. But when it 
comes to the essentials, — to the fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man, — to the doctrine of the ultimate 
holiness and happiness of all God's children, — to the 
faith that there is a better life for us all, not only worth 
having, but to be had here and hereafter, if striven for, — 
in all these things we stand on a common platform. And, 
between you and me, the whole intelligent world is coming 
to stand there, too, without much other distinction of sect 
than so far as relates to the fashion of the mould, the 
extent of the ritual, the mere form of expression. The 
recent conference of churches at Hartford is a recognition 
of two things : first, that the old-time doctrinal differences 
are pretty well obliterated, preserved only in the lingual 
ruts of words which keep half alive the husk of a term 
long after its meaning has evaporated ; and, second, that 
the Christian church has now enough to do in maintaining 



90 THE UNI VERS ALISTS. 

against tlie world those fundamentals of Christianity on 
which all sects agree, without wasting its energies in the 
wrangles of its own subdivisions. 

I am told to-day that it is just a hundred years since, in 
1785, the first convention of Universalist ministers and 
parishes was held, thus constituting the germ of your 
present general convention. During that time what 
growth have you not had ; what missionary work have 
you not done ; where have you not carried the banner of 
your liberal faith; in what corner of the country have 
you not dropped the seed of your church, your colleges, 
your academies, your literature, — multiplying a hundred 
fold their influence not only within but outside of your 
strict denominational lines? With what philanthropy 
and reform have you not been associated ? In view of 
these things, there are certainly two reasons why we of 
the laity should be glad to sit at your festival. In the 
first i^lace, it gives us an opportunity to pay the respect 
we so cordially feel to the body of the clergy who, no 
longer relying on the artificial stagings of the ministerial 
office, or of an establishment, stand for the truths of 
Christian faith and Christian morals, and are still the 
unfailing fountain of good influences and good teaching. 
There are black sheep in every flock, even among the 
laity, but when I think of the great body of the ministry 
of all sects, of their devotion to the work of making the 
world better, of their stimulus to a higher and diviner 
life, of their toil and sacrifice, of the usually small return 
to them of the good things of this world, and of their 
faithful service these many years, I am happy to add my 
small voice in appreciation of their beneficence. For I 
find them identified with the cause of education in its 
broadest sense, cherishing the schools, promoting temper- 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 91 

ance, searcliing out tlie unfortunate and poor, dispensing 
charity, the almoners of sympathy, and, after all, still as 
of yore, one of the strong reliances of our New England 
system. 

In the second place, this festival occasion, bringing 
together the clergy and the laity, suggests what is, in- 
deed, the main thing, — the fact that our interest is a 
common one. You of the clergy are not of one jurisdic- 
tion, and we of the laity of another. We are all of the 
same fold, only with convenient subdivisions of labor. 
These days, like all days in the history of mankind here- 
tofore and forevermore, are crucial and decisive days. 
The problem of life is never solved, and yet the method 
of its solution is as plain as daylight. And that method 
is progress, progress, progress, — progress in physical and 
material circumstance, in intellectual enlargement and 
force, in moral sentiment, in sesthetic refinement, in per- 
sonal character. To all these our relig-ious faith and cul- 
ture are the in-and-through running thread that makes 
their fibre. The school, the church, the press, — in short, 
every institution of modern progress is an agency in their 
development. But close at their heels sweeps the threat- 
ening tide of demoralization and rot and sin and shame 
and vice and misery, and the issue is always the same, 
whether the Red Sea shall swallow all up, or the Promised 
Land be reached. It is a conflict that at once stirs to the 
most heroic endeavor, and at the same time promises the 
reward of the truest and noblest victory. And it is be- 
cause this occasion and this outlet of your denominational 
zeal command clergy and laity to one common duty in this 
respect, that it is fitting we should thus gather together in 
consecration anew to the keeping of the faith and the 
fighting of the good fight.. 



92 THE UNIVERSALISTS. 

Personally, I am liappy to be here. I recall my ac- 
quaintance during my public and private life with so 
many of your representative men and women. I recall 
the June Commencement days and the spreading tent at 
Tufts Hill, where Capen teaches, and where I still seem 
to hear the sonorous voice and see the front lock fluttered 
by the breeze on the forehead of Israel Washburn. I 
recall the ministrations in the town of my own residence 
of Brother Livermore, and the inspiration now and then 
of the eloquence, or better than eloquence, the wisdom, of 
his wife, that evangel of good teaching, Mary Livermore. 
I recall the hard blows, some of which I have had to take, 
but with mauy of which I cordially sympathize, of that 
fearless chamj)ion whom I always name with respect, Dr. 
Miner. I recall from out of my earliest recollection the 
voice of Streeter, and, in later youth, the declamation of 
Chapin. And especially do I look back to the sunrise of 
my own life, and the religious instruction of my child- 
hood,— the little Maine village nestling in the hills; the 
only meeting-house in it a Universalist house of wor- 
ship ; the constant if not brilliant elder who eked out the 
shadow, or rather the shadow of a shadow, of a salary, 
by keeping the winter school and grubbing the small 
parochial acre ; the unpainted pews ; the open windows 
(for in my memory it was unending summer time) through 
which my eyes went always wandering ; the drowsy hum 
outside of insect life, more slumberous even than the 
preacher's voice ; the still dreamier haze of an atmosphere 
of eternal sunshine veiling the sky and tempering the 
lights and shadows on the hills and fields ; the hard- 
working farmers who, in clean Sunday cotton, sat in their 
shirt sleeves, closing their eyes, not in irreverence, but in 
a sacred rest that I am sure was entirely acceptable to the 



THE UNIVERSALISTS. 93 

Good Father ; and all the rural and now so tender memo- 
ries of that day. Ah, my friends, when so much of the 
poetry of life is in its memories, in the associations of 
childhood, in the search for the red strawberry and the 
yellow buttercup, is it not something that we of New 
England, we of country birth, we of these kindly liberal 
faiths, can recall our Scripture, our Sunday-school lessons, 
our Bible verses, our sacred songs, our Sabbath hymns, 
and the whole aroma of our early religious lore from the 
resources of a faith that is inspired by the sunshine of 
God's universal love, by the hope and not the terror of 
his judgment, by the ultimate holiness and not the ulti- 
mate degradation, the redemption, not the casting out, the 
unity, not the separation here or hereafter, of all his 
children, — weak in their shortcomings, but immortal in 
their aspirations. 



ADDRESS 

To THE Colored Veterans in the Hingham Cemetery, 
August 2, 1887. 

I WISH I had the power to utter the inexpressible emo- 
tions I feel in the presence of these representatives of a 
race which was the cause of the war, yet not by any means 
the least potent and patriotic influence in bringing it to a 
successful close. It is a scene which touches the heart, 
and revives sacred memories. We can feel, but we can- 
not utter them. Mine is a lighter duty, the duty in be- 
half of the town of Hingham, where Governor Andrew 
made his summer home, to welcome you to this spot in 
which he lies buried. You have come with tender and 
loving regard to decorate his grave. The skies yesterday 
shone upon you in the gladness of your reunion. They 
are not false to-day ; they only mingle their tears with 
yours over this sacred soil. 

If he could rise from it, if he were here, — if, indeed, 
he be not here, — think for a moment on what his eyes 
would rest. Surely he would behold more, infinitely more 
than even his fervid and hopeful enthusiasm — that enthu- 
siasm which inspired the Commonwealth, inspired the 
country, and inspired you — ever pictured or dared to 
forecast. For he would behold these representatives of 
the millions of a race who were in bondage only a genera- 
tion ago, but among whom to-day, thanks to him, thanks 
to men like him, thanks to yourselves, no fetter clanks 
through the length and breadth of the land. He would 



COLORED VETERANS. 95 

behold them, not merely redeemed from bondage, but 
citizens, like himself, of our great republic, endowed by 
constitutional amendment with full right of suffrage, hold- 
ing state and national office, members of Congress, grad- 
uates of our schools and universities, leaders of public 
opinion, ranking in the professions, gaining in the accu- 
mulation of wealth in the very States where, twenty-five 
years ago, they were under the yoke, and thus destined to 
become a conservative force in the future of our national 
life. 

Best of all is this, that they have arrived in this short 
time to such measure that the only word which seems un- 
fitting at this time is the word which in any way refers 
to them as a separate or distinctive people, or as anything 
else than American citizens. 

The great heart that has crumbled into ashes here 
would never have been satisfied with any narrower desig- 
nation than that. Ah ! my friends, how that heart beat 
for you ! Its consecration to you illuminated his face, it 
made his tongue ring like a bugle, it made his pen fire, 
and his will iron. Never, indeed, will you forget John 
Albion Andrew. You were his friends, and he laid down 
his life for you. He did his work, he kept the faith, he 
fought the fight, he finished the course. If I might in- 
trude any word on you, it would be, that your flowers, 
however fragrant, your songs, however sweet, are not the 
best tribute of this hour ; your tears, however quick, nor 
your eloquence, however fervid. But you owe him this, — 
to go on in that same faith and fight and course in which 
he led and in which you have followed, relying no longer 
on exterior help, relying upon your own souls, the value 
of each of which he recognized and the whole war was 
fought for, — to go on fulfilling the faith, the fight, the 



96 COLORED VETERANS. 

course of the true man, the free citizen, the seK-poised, 
self-reliant, self-respecting, self-ennobling son of God, 
mastering your opportunities, enlarging your education, 
and still marching on, even as the soul of John Brown 
goes marching on. 



RESPONSE 

At the Commencement Dinner at Harvard College, June 
29, 1881. 

I TAKE it, Mr. President, that the true end of a good 
State is to so help its people and its institutions as quick- 
est to enable them to take care of themselves. This result 
has certainly been achieved in respect to Harvard, which 
now not only stands alone, but has achieved its best 
work in its present condition of entire independence. In 
kindly pursuance of an ancient courtesy, the governor of 
the Commonwealth is indeed called up at your annual 
board to respond in her behalf. But I know that the 
time has come when it is only to do these three things : 
first, still in pursuance of the ancient custom, to exhibit to 
you the subdued glitter of his staff and the red coats of 
the Lancers; second, to bring you her congratulations, 
her expression of confidence in your present work, and 
her thanks for your great contributions to education and 
patriotism ; and, third, to join with you in extending a 
welcome to the guests who come from foreign lands or 
from sister States, and, let me add, at this time, — may 
such another occasion not soon occur, — to join in your 
regret at the separation from Harvard of that beloved 
pastor, who has reflected not more credit upon the college 
than upon the Commonwealth. If it happens, as it does 
to-day, that her representative is also one of your own 
graduates, not only does he do this duty with a warm per- 
sonal interest, but the comparison which his own memory 



98 HARVARD. 

enables him to make between the spirit and the work of 
this university, as it was and as it is, is itself an enthusias- 
tic tribute to its recent progress and increased beneficence. 
Time was, as perhaps it always must be, when almost the 
only insj^iration was in the student's heart. Whatever 
came to him came, as perhaps must always be the case, 
more as an incident than as a result. But now, surely, 
the people of the Commonwealth have a satisfaction, never 
greater than to-day, in the bearing and fruit of Harvard, 
because, under its present administration, it is lifted out 
of those ruts which are never a thing of the past, but 
which grow every year like the wrinkles on the horn of 
an ox ; and because it is under a leader who has made the 
college felt in every fibre of the life of the state, and who 
from the outer world, which constantly owes something to 
his voice and suggestion, draws also back still more to 
freshen and fit the youth of Harvard for the world's work. 
The wdiole cause of education is strengthened. The whole 
domain of youth is enlarged. The scholar is indeed made 
a power. President Eliot in thus recognizing the broader 
needs and the best elements of that body of the people, 
which is Massachusetts, pays them, if an unconscious, yet 
a just, tribute. And they in turn pay him the tribute of 
their appreciation. If he were in the political arena, I 
am quite sure he would afford that combination, referred 
to by the young orator of the morning, whose theme was 
the eighth President of the United States, — the combina- 
tion of intellectual strength and skill in affairs. 

For the Commonwealth no response is needed, certainly 
not in this presence of her sons, who are themselves her 
best response. The pessimists, who always go mad wath 
the summer heats or possibly now at the approach of the 
comet, who always find so much to criticise in the spots 



HARVARD. 99 

on the sun that they make the sun itself a failure, and 
who draw all their saws and instances from that metropo- 
lis from which 3^ou, sir, are glad to escape now and then 
to the purer air of Massachusetts, would find their occu- 
pation gone, were they to take up their abode in her bor- 
ders. Corruption may stalk, but not in her legislative 
halls. Money may buy offices, but has not yet bought 
hers ; indeed the income of her officials is less than that 
of the average college professor. The price of her judi- 
ciary is at least above rubies, as well it may be, for that is 
the price of wisdom. Her civil service, Mr. Curtis, is not 
the worst on the face of the globe. Life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness are ensured. Property is secure. 
Order prevails. Industry thrives. Charity abounds. Her 
prisons are asylums. Evidences of soul can be found, 
without the aid of the microscope, in her corporations. 
Her la\vyers earn a modest fee. Her physicians meet in 
happy conclave and celebrate a century of respectable and 
kindly blundering. At all her centennials, — and they are 
becoming painfully frequent, — whether of town, or school, 
or society, or of whatever department of her life, no praises 
are quite loud enough to sing the excellence of her pro- 
gress, till, going the rounds, perfection is found to be the 
condition of every institution except the unhappy one of 
politics, which is made a scapegoat for all the rest. And 
yet our politics are so far harmless. In her lexicon there 
is no such word as boss. Her people have no " leader." 
They have their way and get what they want in the choice 
of their candidates far more than in that of their sermons, 
or, as the statistics begin to show, of their marriages. But 
the price of all this is vigilance. There is danger — dan- 
ger from greed, danger from intolerance and narrowness 
above and ignorance below, danger from lack of that gen- 



100 HARVARD. 

erous culture which lifts a man to the exercise of the best 
things in himself and to the appreciation of the best things 
in his fellow men. And to meet this danger the Common- 
wealth still looks to the training, the influence, the inspi- 
ration of her institutions of education ; and to none more 
than to Harvard, which still is, as from the beginning it 
has been, at the head. 



OPENING ADDRESS 

At the Fair of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
TO Children, Horticultural Hall, Boston, December 8, 

1880. 

This fair is now open and will be held in aid of the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. As 
we think of the faces of the little ones, at the sight of 
whom the heart of the Master melted so tenderly ; as we 
think of the little heads that under our own lamplight 
bow at nightfall in prayer, of the little hands that nestle 
in ours, of the eyes that laugh in happiness or droop when 
sickness comes; as we think at once of the dependence 
and priceless worth and sacredness of the soul of a little 
child, it seems incredible that there should be need of such 
a society, or that there should be such a thing as cruelty 
to children. And yet the record of Mr. Fay's work will 
show you instance after instance of neglect and outrage, 
of wrong to the soul and to the body, of exposure and 
blows and mutilation, of starvation and brutality, and also 
of the moral degradation that comes from the forcing of 
children into every species of imposture, deceit, and crime. 
It is not poverty that is at fault. Poverty is as tender 
and loving and devoted to its young as is wealth, and de- 
serves credit far more, because it is tenderness, love, and 
devotion at far greater cost and sacrifice. It is the fault 
of crime and avarice, of fiendishness, and, more than all 
else, of the terrible and blunting savageness of strong 
drink and intoxication. The society to which I have re- 



102 THE CHILDREN. 

f erred, made up as it is of the union of two former soci- 
eties, organized under the laws of the Commonwealth, 
directed by some of your wisest and most philanthropic 
citizens, and with an agent of great experience, humanity, 
and skill, is endeavoring to search out the victims of such 
wrong, to bring light to the desolate hearts of children 
dependent and neglected, to relieve their immediate dis- 
tress by improving their surroundings, or by helj)ing to 
transfer them to better ones, and especially to aid in 
directing them into channels of education, honest labor, 
and honest growth. It is a society that has no funds. It 
depends entirely on the donations of the private citizen. 
So far these have not failed, but the field is so broad, the 
appeal is so touching, that this fair is held and the warm 
heart of Massachusetts is besought to give yet more gen- 
erously, so that a greater bounty may be bestowed and a 
greater good done. Whatever the cause that is at your 
hearts, — if it be education, here you may begin at its foun- 
dation; if it be the crusade against intemperance, here 
you may rescue its victims from the earliest blight ; if it 
be the suppression of crime, here you may not only save 
those who are exposed to its infliction, but snatch from 
the path of temptation those who would otherwise grow 
up to be its perpetrators. It appeals to the conscience 
and prudence of men who feel the need of keeping the 
social fabric wholesome and safe ; — to the hearts of wo- 
men, whom may Heaven bless for this and for many an- 
other charity, and to whom the most plaintive appeal on 
earth is a child's cry of pain or a child's outstretched and 
pleading hands, — and to the very happiness of those 
favored children who, of all the blessings that fortune 
showers upon them, cannot too soon learn that there is 
none so sweet as the power to help others. There is no 



THE CHILDREN. 103 

literature, there are no songs so tender and touching as 
those which tell of the sympathies, the sorrows, the out- 
reach of childhood. There will be no question of the fit- 
ness of your giving in this cause. Your gift, however 
light, will come back to you unconsciously, day after day, 
in the story of the rescue of some castaway group of little 
breaking hearts, in the face of some child brightened you 
know not how, in the manly life of some boy moving on 
in the honor and success of a true citizen, who but for the 
impulse of the charity to which this society and this fair 
are trying to give practical direction, might have been the 
criminal or the pauper, undermining or burdening society 
and the state. It may be yours to say some day with the 
poet, — 

" And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And pausing takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air." 

And perhaps on your ears may sometime fall the blessed 
words : " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these, ye have done it unto me." 



GENEEAL GEANT. 

At the Middlesex Club Dinner, Hotel Brunswick, 
October 18, 1880. 

I DEEM it my good fortune that it is permitted me in 
behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to bring, 
in few but sincere words, the hearty, cordial, unstinted 
greeting of all her people, whatever their color, whatever 
their birth, whatever their politics, rich or poor, — we 
have no high or low, — to that distinguished citizen who, 
however many other titles he may have earned or may 
hereafter earn in his varying and distinguished service of 
his country, will never be known by any title more endur- 
ing or more endearing than by that of General Grant. 
The people of Massachusetts honor him because he was a 
loyal soldier in war and because he is a loyal citizen in 
peace. I believe that there is no heart within our borders 
that has not beat quicker for his coming. There is no 
roof here, entering which he shall not find hanging on its 
walls, familiar as the face of Washington, the picture of 
the hero of Yicksburg, of Chattanooga, of Appomattox. 
If to-morrow or next day he shall fare through our rich 
autumnal scenery, his eye will fall upon many a modest 
headstone that marks the last resting-place of some one 
of those soldiers who loved him and followed him. If 
he tarry for never so short a time in any of our villages, 
the old veterans of the war will cluster around him to 
catch another grasp of the hand, another glimpse of the 
face of the man under whom they were willing to march 



GRANT. 105 

to glory, and to follow on that line if it took all sum- 
mer. 

Above all partisanship, Massachusetts greets him here, 
because he was the general who never whined or flinched ; 
because as President his veto saved the country from finan- 
cial chaos ; because as an American citizen, after receiving 
the most flattering attention at home and abroad, he has 
preserved his simplicity of character and only broadened 
into a nobler statesmanship and a wider faith in republi- 
can institutions ; and perhaps most of all, because as a 
simple citizen, wise, disinterested, and patriotic in his 
recent utterances during the present year, he has shown, 
as an observer of the institutions of his country, a mag- 
nanimity which was large enough to take in not a part 
but the whole of it. 

I shoidd not do justice to the Commonwealth, also, if I 
did not greet him as the representative of the great West, 
which has been so largely peopled from the loins of Mas- 
sachusetts and attuned by its spirit. If to-morrow he 
shall lay his ear above the graves of Bradford and Brew- 
ster and Winslow and Carver, and of that other doughty 
little captain. Miles Standish, he will distinguish, amid 
the music of the ocean which resounds at his feet, the 
strains of the finer music of those departed souls. It will 
breathe to him that love of liberty, that independence of 
individuality, that equality of all God's children, that eter- 
nal sense of right which, planted two hundred and fifty 
years ago on the icy and barren edge of Plymouth Rock, 
are to-day the most magnificent harvests of the West, 
richer than its grain and its gold, mightier even than its 
men of battle. I say that it will breathe that strain in his 
ear. As I remember his life and services, as I have read 
and as I have heard his words, I am sure that that strain 



106 GRANT. 

has already been breathed to bim. I deem it fortunate to- 
day that he, his family, and his friends come among us in 
the glorious season of the turning year. Our rivers and 
hillsides never more brilliant, our clear autumnal lights 
never more mellow, give him welcome. They give him wel- 
come because he recalls that group of statesmen — some 
of them now glittering among the stars this October night 
— who stood for the salvation of our country in its great 
hour of peril ; because he recalls to us Lincoln, who leaned 
on him; because he recalls Andrew, who looked not in 
vain to him to strike a blow ; and because in so many 
loyal hearts and patriotic memories he stands as the rep- 
resentative of that loyalty which is more vital and more 
sacred even than loyalty to the flag, — loyalty to free gov- 
ernment of the people, and to human rights. I am sure 
General Grant will take as the best word I can say that 
Massachusetts, in whatever other respects it honors him, 
honors him most in so far as he has fought for and stood 
for, and will continue to give the great weight of his in- 
fluence to those ideals to the memory of which she rears 
these statues of Winthrop and Adams and Webster and 
Andrew, to the defense of which she sent Whitney and 
Shaw and Ladd and Lowell to die in the streets of Balti- 
more or on the battlefield, and for the maintenance of 
which she will hold all public men till she shall cease to 
be the Commonwealth of the Pilgrim and the Puritan. 



GENEEAL SHERMAN. 

Reception by the Boston Merchants' Association, December 

27, 1880. 

I THANK you, Mr. President, and through you the Mer- 
chants' Association of Boston, not only for this kindly 
greeting, but also for the opportunity to pay my personal 
respects to General Sherman, and to convey to him from 
the whole Commonwealth a " Merry Christmas " and a 
" Happy New Year." Yes, Mr. President, many and 
many a happy new year of a long and useful life ! I had 
hoped to do him what I might modestly call the greatest 
honor of his life by receiving him under the gilded dome, 
by introducing him to our military and civil officials, to my 
staff, also gilded, and particularly to our honorable coun- 
cilors, one of whom, I believe, has the still greater honor of 
being a member of the Merchants' Association ; by reading 
to him a portion of my forthcoming inaugural address ; by 
pointing his reverential gaze to the sacred codfish, and, 
certainly, by touching his heart and dimming his eyes, as 
I know they would have been dimmed, at the sight in 
Doric Hall of our regimental flags, some of which have 
often bent to salute him in the field, and beneath which 
so many of the soldiers of Massachusetts, with never- 
failing confidence in their commander, have followed him 
into the fire of battle, and have tramped with him from 
Atlanta to the sea. And if he had stayed to listen I am 
not sure that he would not have heard, faint from their 
folds at first, but soon loud and stirring upon his ear, a 



108 SHERMAN. 

familiar strain as ten thousand loyal voices came back to 
his memory, singing the resounding chorus of '' Marching 
through Georgia." 

While I regret that he has been obliged to decline me 
this, yet I very much rejoice that it is because the exten- 
sion of other courtesies to him by our citizens has pre- 
occupied his time, so that he needs no added assurance of 
how welcome he is everywhere among our peoj^le, and how 
universal and sincere is their appreciation of his great 
services. The people of Massachusetts, general, are a 
patriotic people. Love of country is in the very fibre of 
their hearts. They breathe it in the air ; they are taught 
it in every verse they sing, in every public word they hear, 
and in every line they read. They honor the flag in 
defense of which their best blood has run, and they are 
loyal to the republic which their best brains and conscience 
helped to found, to better, and to perpetuate. But their 
love of country is large enough and generous enough to 
embrace it all. They value the triumph of the national 
arm, in wielding which you had so large a share, mainly 
in proportion as it has opened a greater opportunity for 
the common progress of the whole country. And there- 
fore they especially honor a man who to brilliant service 
in the field, — to a conqueror's march through an enemy's 
country as famous now, both in itself and in its com- 
mander's story of its progress, as that of Xenophon, — 
and to a final victory second only to that of Richmond, 
could also add the magnanimity of generous terms to a 
surrendering foe, and who, from that day to this, has 
known nothing narrower than a reunited country. In 
behalf, therefore, of the Commonwealth, I extend most 
cordial greeting to General Sherman. 

Nor, certainly, can I do that, especially in the presence 



SHERMAN. 109 

of the merchants of Boston, without calling to mind an- 
other of the same name and of the same blood, who, in 
civil life, has distinguished himself equally with our hon- 
ored guest in his military career. Massachusetts knows 
no better financial philosophy than an honest dollar, the 
best money for all alike, and the exact payment of every 
public obligation. And, grateful to the Secretary of the 
Treasury for his splendid administration of this branch 
of the government upon these simple principles, she only 
hopes that his successor will be as good a man as John 
Sherman himself. 

If Massachusetts were to give you a toast, therefore, I 
am sure she would give you The Two Shermans, — William 
and John. With their kinsman, Roger, they form a con- 
stellation in the public service of their country. Indeed 
we may regard them as our Castor and Pollux, — one the 
tamer of that fiery steed, the greenback, and the other 
a boxer, whose gauntlet was an army corps of freemen 
fighting for the integrity of the whole country, for the 
emancipation of the slave, and for the emancipation, also, 
even of their foes from the barbarism and palsy of own- 
ership in man. 



GENERAL LOGAN. 

At a Memorial Meeting at the Metropolitan Church, 
Washington, D. C, February 10, 1888. 

In behalf of the Commonwealth from which I come, I 
am glad to join in this tribute to the brave and loyal soul, 
without fear and without reproach, the soldier's idol and 
friend, the founder of Memorial Day, — General Logan. 
We pay our tribute, not to his memory, but to him. It 
is the poverty of our language, if not of our thoughts, that 
when men die we speak of them as gone, and inscribe our 
honors to their memories rather than to their immortal 
lives. 

General Logan was rarely in New England. Only a 
small fraction of our people ever saw him. But for that 
very reason he is scarcely more gone from them now than 
he was during his earthly walk. Then, as now, he was, 
and now, as then, he is to them a life ; a positive force 
added to the world's djmamic energies ; an impulse of pa- 
triotism ; a factor in the national vitality ; a suggestion of 
personal courage, of loyal service, of public and private 
integrity ; a type of characteristic American citizenship. 
He has fixed himself upon their vision like a star. 

The scenes of the war exhibit no more vivid picture 
than that which one of his eulogists in the House of Rep- 
resentatives gave of him at Atlanta on the 22d of July, 
1864, when McPherson was slain, the Army of Tennessee 
was falling back, and Logan, its new commander, mounted 
on his black war-horse, his hair floating back, his eyes 



LOGAN. Ill 

ablaze, his voice ringing like a bugle, came, like Sheridan 
at Winchester, flashing down the line which, rallying at 
his lead, returned to the attack, and drove the foe from 
the field. Nor was there ever a nobler magnanimity than 
his toward Thomas. 

For these reasons a peculiarly warm and effusive regard 
always springs toward him from the hearts of the people. 
To them he was the black eagle of victory. If they or 
their press ever criticised him, they never doubted him. 
If, in the fiery contentions of our politics, they charged 
him with the faults which are the common lot of all, they 
never questioned the strong, heroic qualities he shared, 
not with all, nor even with the many, but with the few. 
He was not the greatest soldier of the war, yet he stands 
its most picturesque and striking volunteer, never failing 
in promptness or performance. He was not the first 
statesman of the republic, yet he was one of the moulding 
forces that shaped its political course. He was not the 
foremost of orators, yet he exerted an influence on public 
sentiment which the most eloquent orators might envy. 
It may be said of him, which cannot be said of others who 
have ranked higher, that he never fell below himself or 
the expectation which was had of him. His military ca- 
reer was far greater and more brilliant than his training 
or his opportunity would have suggested. There was no 
coming short of himself, no disappointment to the hope. 

He again represents, as so many have represented, that 
splendid type of American improvement of American op- 
portunities. His were frontier life, obstacles, struggle, 
courage, persistence, indefatigable industry, quencldess 
ambition, success, victory, and the desert of victory. In 
the generations to come the American boy's heart, as he 
learns his country's story, will burn with the picture of the 



112 LOGAN. 

martial figure and achievements of John A. Logan. The 
posterity of the emancipated slaves will remember his loy- 
alty to their race, — fighting in war for their freedom, and 
in peace for their equal rights before the law. And the 
American fireside will long recall, as an inspiring stimulus 
to the purity and blessedness of home, the domestic bond 
that united him and Mary, his wife, hardly more together 
than it united them both in the respect of their country- 
men and countrywomen. 

It was his distinction that he emphasized the talents 
God gave him. The whole republic recognizes him as a 
conspicuous example ; as one of its heroes, not of exagger- 
ation, but of the great body of the peoj)le ; not of romance, 
but of our realistic American life. As such the people 
loved him ; as such we pay him here and now our tribute, 
grateful for his services in war and peace, his chivalrous 
courage, his pure, brave, patriotic life. Still with us are 
Sherman and Sheridan ; over the river are Grant, Thomas, 
Hancock, Logan, and so many, many illustrious names of 
captains and privates. All these are now of one equal 
rank at last in God's grand army and loyal legion. 



RESPONSE 

At the Banquet of the National Druggists' Association at 
Odd Fellows Hall, Boston, August 25, 1887. 

It is very little I can say in response to your toast ex- 
cept to thank you for my seat at your generous board in 
this goodly company. If the variety from which I have 
supped is a sample of your wares, then I am sure your 
drugs are very delightful to take ; and the price, a few 
words in the way of a speech, is much more reasonable 
than your general reputation would lead one to believe. I 
feel something of kinship with you, when I remember that 
the ordinary congressman's speech is one of the common- 
est drugs in the market. But none the less disinterestedly 
can I testify to the debt which the whole community owe 
you. Why, sir, more than half the literature and most 
of the pictorial charm in the daily papers — need I refer 
to their advertising columns ? — are yours. Disinterested 
and spontaneous lovers of their fellow men pour their con- 
fessions into the public prints so that others may learn, as 
they have learned, that all the ills to which the human 
body is heir fly at your approach ; that where one spear of 
hair once grew, there now grow two ; that grim dyspepsia is 
only the dark portal which opens upon the luxurious vista 
of its cure ; and that the kidneys are but a providential 
agency for tickling the palate with nectars such as were 
never dreamed of by the gods. You have added a new 
picturesqueness to nature with the blazonry which your 
Raphaels and Angelos — Mike Angelos — have daubed 



114 THE DRUGGISTS. 

on every cliff and rural barn. My earliest instruction in 
art, when, a boy in Maine, I bought candy in a country 
store, was to gaze with large eyes upon the illustrated 
placard which, specked somewhat by the summer flies, but 
still gaudily picturing the wall, portrayed the glory and 
beneficence of Townsend's Sarsaparilla. It is said that 
Daniel Webster took his first lesson in statesmanship 
from studying the Constitution printed on a cheap pocket- 
handkerchief. We are like him in this respect, many of 
us having had our early reading lessons in deciphering 
the directions, in large type, on the label of Perry Davis' 
Pain Killer. What brings such sweet somnolence as a 
drug, — unless it be a sermon ? Where else than at the 
druggists' do you find such a charming and efficient cure 
for all ills, — except in the solemn platform of a political 
party convention? 

As a Massachusetts man I gladly join in welcoming to 
Boston you who have come from the cities of the whole 
country over. There is no extent to which the " Hub " 
will not go in yielding every courtesy to her sister cities. 
If she fail at all in that respect, attribute it to her modest 
reluctance to surpass them in their previous receptions of 
your association. You have given me rather an indefinite 
toast, " Our Representatives in Congress." As one of 
them I am of course your friend, and thank you for call- 
ing me so. Why, sir, what Congressman, looking at yet 
higher honors, would not be the friend of five hundred 
adults, voters, representing so many States of the Union, 
each one with a ballot in his hand, each having paid his 
poll-tax, although at the same time evading as much of 
the rest of his tax as he conveniently can ? I speak not 
for myself, but rather for the whole general membership 
of that distinguished legislative body to which you have 



THE DRUGGISTS. 115 

referred, when I say that, clumsy, uncertain, and slow as 
may be the steps of Congress, yet Congress does desire and 
try, as far as possible, to look after and attend to your 
business interests and the general interests of the country. 
I recall the frequent pathetic, if not poetic, picture of 
dignified and venerable gentlemen, whom in private life 
you could not touch with a ten-foot pole, if, peradventure, 
you should ever desire to touch them with a ten-foot pole, 
who yet, when once elected to service in Washington, be- 
come the most servile of errand boys, sweating through 
the departments to do chores for the people whom they 
represent and whose suffrages they are willing, not on 
their own account, but yielding to the demand of their 
" friends," to retain. You aslc, why then does not Con- 
gress do something, why not pass this law or that? The 
answer is, because of the great conflict of interests among 
you and in the community at large. Congress is only the 
expression of public sentiment, — nothing more. If that 
public sentiment is divided. Congress is divided. When 
that sentiment unites to the extent of a majority senti- 
ment, then Congress enacts its commands. You say you 
want a bankrupt law and can get none. It is because 
there is not a sufficient majority of people in favor of it 
to secure its passage. You have not had, since 1883, a 
revision of the tariff. It is because public sentiment has 
not been united enough in demanding it. In other words, 
it is you, and other associations like yours, who, not as in- 
dividuals, but as the great business constituencies of the 
nation, are the real Congress of the United States. The 
responsibility is yours as well as ours. It is for you to 
mould the public sentiment and pay the bills ; for us to 
formulate it into law and draw the salary. 

In all seriousness, gentlemen, I should not do myself or 



116 THE DRUGGISTS. 

this occasion justice if I did not speak my word of tribute 
to the beneficence and importance of your guild. You 
represent millions of accumulated and invested capital. 
You employ thousands and thousands of employees. You 
distribute uncounted wages, which is the material bread 
of life. You turn the wheels of manufactories, and spread 
the sails, and weight the iron steeds of commerce. Thus 
from your own arena you reach into swift and vital rela- 
tions with every social, political, and industrial problem, 
and becoming more than members of your own depart- 
ment of activity, are efficient and responsible forces in the 
great onward civilization of the age. Nor do I forget that 
there is in you something of the Good Samaritan, who 
poured the oil and wine ; and that your work goes to the 
assuaging of human suffering, the finding of new and 
more helpful agencies for securing health and repelling 
disease, and to the holding up of the hands of the physi- 
cian and surgeon, whose ministry is akin to that of him 
who ministers to the sorrows and needs of the human soul. 
You have the sweetest of all rewards, the consciousness of 
helping humanity ; of somehow, somewhere, making some 
one happier and better by bringing sleep to a tired eyelid, 
by bringing rest to an exhausted brain, by bringing quiet 
to a shattered and tingling nerve, by bringing relief to 
pain, cure to disease, health to infirmity, and by bringing 
also, let you and me frankly say, a modest profit in return 
to your pockets, and now and then a good dinner to a 
poor but respectable congressman. 



WEBSTER CENTENNIAL 

At Marshfield, October 13, 1882. 

A HUNDRED years ago last January Daniel Webster 
was born. Thirty years ago this month he died and was 
buried on this farm. To-day we visit his grave, not 
pouring upon it libations of wine and milk and blood, not 
shedding over it the tears of recent grief, but paying it 
the tribute of a reverent memory, the gratitude of a 
nation's heart, and the justice due a mighty defender and 
saviour of our country. My poor word of praise and criti- 
cism concerning him has been spoken, and I shall not 
repeat it. Here he speaks for himself. On this sacred 
soil, within sight of these elms, in the open air of this 
October day, there comes a feeling that he is here, that 
his great eyes greet us, and that his eloquent lips will 
speak and silence ours. And here, indeed, he is. What 
idle formality was it that took us to the dust he long ago 
shook off, when here, in every whisper of the wind, in 
every scarlet leaf, in these woods and fields and streams, 
he, the genius of them all, still lives, as he still lives 
in the constitution he expounded and moulded, in the 
union he cemented and preserved, and in the impress he 
stamped upon the political sentiment of the American 
people. 

This spot has been well chosen for the tribute of this 
day. Here, with a sense of restfulness and sympathy, 
came the great heart of Daniel Webster. Large as was 
the honor he bestowed on Marshfield, he bestowed nothing 



118 MARSHFIELD. 

grander tlian he found. For here the lonely sea, which 
he loved, and in whose vastness and grandeur his own 
great soul felt a subtle kinship, communed with him, yet 
spoke no language he did not comprehend, and breathed 
no whisper he did not catch. Here with him the pilgrim 
sage sought the freedom of the new world for the exer- 
cise of his conscience. Here Winslow and Standish and 
Bradford and Brewster walked the forest aisles and dis- 
cussed with him great themes of constitutional law, of 
chartered rights, of civil and religious liberty. Here, 
under his elm and from beneath his almost equally over- 
hanging brim and brow, he saw the sails of the May- 
flower far off, and in her cabin gravely drew the compact 
that embodied the germ of those basal ideas of union and 
liberty, one and inseparable, which were imprinted on his 
heart like a legend. Here in all the earth and air was the 
spirit of that pilgrim enterprise and purpose of which he 
never tired, to which he drew close, and from which he 
drank copious inspiration. Here, too, the very soil, re- 
sponding to his sympathetic care and nurture, turned to 
verdure and beauty ; here he looked his oxen in the face ; 
and here the wide fields, barren and bleak, clothed them- 
selves for him with the graceful shade of groves and were 
musical with the rustle of the waving grain. In the 
touching homely humanity which attaches to Webster in 
his relation to rural things, to the farm and to all the 
instincts of neighborly New England life, there is some- 
thing that endears him to us, independent of his great 
eminence as a statesman and a lawyer. Whether he 
planted, or fished, or gunned, or waded streams, or cooled 
his shadowy brow under the trees, or drove over the 
country roads, or met his neighbors in the fields or by 
the fireside, it was still the same ; it was the sense of the 



MARSHFIELD. 119 

proximity of a New England man, born in the humble 
farmhouse, true to the instincts of the fields, and loving 
the cattle and the hay, the furrow and the marsh. 

And here the great orator, the great senator, the great 
lawyer, is still the Marshfield farmer and neighbor. He 
has to-day given us all a cordial w^elcome. He has fed us 
at his table. He has sat with us in his library and under 
his elm. He has shown us his crops and barns, his cattle 
and sheep. We grasp his hand and go back to our 
homes, and not till we have broken the charm of his per- 
sonal courtesy are we f idly conscious that we have been 
with him who pronounced the magnificent funeral ora- 
tion of Adams and Jefferson, the discourses at Plymouth 
Rock and Bunker Hill, the Dartmouth College argument, 
and the overwhelming and resistless replies to Hayne and 
Calhoun. All honor to his memory ; all gratitude for his 
service ; all justice to his fame ! 

It is my happy privilege and duty to give cordial wel- 
come to all who have gathered here, — to the officers and 
citizens of this town of Marshfield and this county of 
Plymouth in which Webster lived, and to my fellow-citi- 
zens of this Commonwealth of which he was so many 
years the admiration and glory. I welcome the Ancient 
and Honorable Artillery company and the veteran sol- 
diers of the Grand Army, whose gunpowder was ground 
from Webster's logic. In the name of the Commonwealth 
and in behalf of the Webster Historical Society, I also 
cordially welcome the distinguished guests who have come 
from beyond our borders, the governors of our beloved 
sister New England States, and especially him whose name 
I have kept till last, in order to present him first, the 
President of the United States. Welcome, sir, to Massa- 
chusetts and to Marshfield, to the State of the Adamses, 



120 MARSHFIELD. 

whose successor you are, and to the grave of Webster, 
but for whom it is hardly too much to say that to-day 
they would have no successor. Massachusetts thinks no 
courtesy too great, no greeting too cordial, to bestow 
upon the chief magistrate of the nation in which there 
is no stauncher or more loyal state. But with especial 
interest does she welcome you, remembering your associa- 
tion with Garfield, whom she honored and loved, the dig- 
nity with which you bore the terrible ordeal of his long 
agony of death and succeeded to his place, and the cour- 
age and force of conviction with which, on more than one 
occasion, you have exercised the prerogative of your great 
office. Fellow-citizens, I present to you the President of 
the United States. 



MAYOR PEINCE. 

On the Unveiling of his Portrait at the Dedication of 
THE Prince Schoolhouse, Boston, November 10, 1881. 

I THINK, Mr. Mayor, you will agree with me — wlio 
have so recently passed through the ordeal to which you 
are now subjected — that it is on an occasion like this 
far more blessed to give than to receive. And yet, next 
to the pleasure which I feel in presenting to you this, 
your portrait, — the cordial gift of many friends, — 
must be that which you feel in the regard in which they 
hold you, and of which it is only the expression. Nor is 
it possible that you could deem any monument more en- 
viable than this likeness of yourself, the citizen magistrate 
of the modern Athens, hanging upon the walls of one of 
her sacred temples of learning, forever in the presence of 
the soulful faces and expanding intelligence of her chil- 
dren, who for generations hence will hither come to drink 
at the fountains of intellectual life, to be inspired by noble 
examples, and thus to lay the deep foundations of char- 
acter. The schoolroom is the very garden of immortality. 
Classes may come and classes may go, but there still flows 
in forever the springtide of rosy youth. And, communi- 
cating itself to your double here, from whom from this 
day hence you part company in respect to growing old, 
he, too, shall never know or feel the lapse of years, but 
always be the polished scholar and gentleman he is to- 
day. And when, as I trust may be the case, long after 
the twentieth century shall have begun its round, you 



122 MAYOR PRINCE. 

will perchance enter again these doors, — your cane, no 
doubt, in hand, just as the artist has given it to you here, 
— it may be that some school-child will guide your steps 
with her little hand, and, 2)ointing thither, tell you, in 
innocent ignorance of your identity, that it is the picture 
of one of Boston's good old mayors, who for many years 
presided over her destinies, who loved her for her ancient 
fame and her later worth, who in many graceful orations 
maintained her reputation for eloquence, who identified 
himself with her progress in learning, art, and literature, 
and who, fostering her schools, did not forget that the 
education of all her children is her greatest duty and her 
proudest achievement. If the child shall assure you that 
it was at the time of its susjDension an excellent likeness, 
she will tell you, though the flattering compliment may at 
this moment somewhat severely test your modest}^, only 
the simple truth. If ever an artist was to be congratu- 
lated upon a success which leaves nothing to be desired, 
and which has reproduced his subject to the very life, it 
is Mr. Parker, in this effort of his skill. There are those 
who doubt the propriety of public portraits of the living ; 
but at least in your case, sir, I cannot believe the city will 
suffer any detriment. As for yourself, though you were 
the best of men, you would be a better one remembering 
that children at school look daily on your face ; and I am 
sure you and I enjoy our portraits far more than if their 
execution were postponed until after our own. As for 
your fellow citizens, why should they be debarred the 
pleasure of thus exhibiting their regard for one whom 
they have already paid the greater tribute of choosing so 
many times to be the chief magistrate of their city? 

Mr. Mayor, my duty is done. It affords me great and 
perhaps a vindictive pleasure to leave you, as you so re- 



MAYOR PKINCE. 123 

cently left me, to the painful embarrassment, from which, 
however, your facility will easily release you, of respond- 
ing to the presentation of your own portrait, and of pro- 
nouncing an oration of which you shall yourself be the 
sole topic. Let me only add how cordially my own per- 
sonal sympathies go with the words I have uttered in 
behalf of those of whom I am the representative in pre- 
senting this excellent likeness. I congratulate you. Mayor 
Prince, upon an honor now conferred upon you, greater 
than the laurel wreath, in that a plain Boston schoolhouse 
has this day been dedicated, to which your name has been 
given, and on the walls of which your picture hangs. 



RESPONSE 

At the Dinner on Forefathers' Day at Davis Hall, 
Plymouth, Mass., December 21, 1880. 

Both as representing a Commonwealtli made up in 
part of the Plymoutli Colony, of which John Carver was 
the first governor, and personally as a resident of Ply- 
month County and a descendant from Pilgrim stock, it is 
with great pleasure that I join to-day in this commemo- 
ration of the landing of that band of exiles who, two hun- 
dred and sixty years ago, moored their bark on what we 
have, indeed, amid this morning's storm, found to be the 
wild New England shore. I am glad to pay them the 
tribute of Massachusetts, for, as the germ of the oak is in 
the acorn, the germ of our Commonwealth, alike in herself 
and as she represents the nation at large, was in the 
group which clustered that December day on Plymouth 
Eock. 

In responding for her I speak for no class or calling, 
but for all her men and women. I rejoice that she is 
to-day — on a larger scale — just what the Pilgrim com- 
munity was, more than two centuries and a half ago, — a 
community the virtue of which is not in its governors, or 
preachers, or captains, but in its homes and firesides, its 
families like those in the picture in Pilgrim Hall, and its 
plain men and women who live temperate, pure, and 
wholesome lives, who constitute the ranks of a stable citi- 
zenship, who go about their daily toil, who sustain our 
schools, and who are the foundations of society. It is 



FOREFATHERS' DAY. 125 

Miles Standish still who stands ready at call to shoulder 
his musket for the common defense. It is Elder Brewster 
still who pitches the popular sentiment, and discharges 
whatever public or private duty falls to his hands. It is 
Priscilla still who is the saint of the New England home, 
— sweetheart, wife, or mother. 

Massachusetts has, perhaps, her faults ; but if so, they 
are of the surface. Her heart beats always true and 
sound. There is the ideal as well as the historic life in 
states as there is in men. Charles Lamb, looking at 
the epitaphs in a graveyard, asked where all the bad 
people were buried. It was wit ; it was not wisdom. 
There was not a record there that did not truly tell 
the ideal life, which was the only thing worth telling, 
and which, through whatever sin or folly, the poor heart 
that lay beneath had recognized and aspired to reach. 
And so of the Commonwealth, the question to be asked 
is. What is its ideal ? You know what it is. You recog- 
nize it by your coming here. You read it in the verse of 
Whittier. You read it in the blundering scrawl, in 
which the Massachusetts boy, writhing over his first com- 
position, tries to express the aspiration he has drunk in 
from the very air. You read it in the unerring public 
sentiment to which there still lies an appeal from all arti- 
ficial tribunals. It is not wealth ; it is not power ; it is 
not the survival of the fittest : it is the consecration of 
all to the happiness and freedom of each one ; it is the 
recognition of the value of a single human soul. Under 
such a test the glory of the Eoman soldier, of Grecian 
art, of kingdoms and empires, fades away. The Pilgrim 
and the Puritan stand forth. John Carver and John 
Winthrop reach down and clasp the hands alike of John 
Andrew and of a hospital nurse. The fire gleams on a 



126 lUKEFATHERS' DAY. 

farmer's hearth, at which an eager-eyed boy reads a book. 
The son of a New England missionary devotes his life to 
the education of the shy and bruised Indian, as well as 
of the enfranchised slave, to deliver whom from bondage 
he had already risked his life in battle. The freemen of 
a town gather in a homely shed to raise money by taxa- 
tion, and to discuss the laying out of a way. A mother 
kisses her son as he goes to fight for his country, and 
looks not on his face again until it cannot answer back 
her tears. A housewife, her table cleared, runs to visit 
the sick. There is no village in which are not the 
schoolroom, the library, the town house, and the church. 
Thrift and industry are indoors and out of doors ; wealth 
and labor alike mean refinement and growth. And amid 
this scene he is greatest who is the servant of all. 

It is all the enlarged expression of what was in the 
heart and faith of the Pilgrim. Across the years Massa- 
chusetts pays him her tribute of gratitude and love. 



THE OLD SIXTH. 

At the Dinner of the Regimental Association, at Lowell, 
April 19, 1881. 

I KNOW I need not assure you, Mr. President, of my 
sincere interest in the celebration of this anniversary. 
Personally, I cannot forget that among the members of 
the Sixth were not only those who were friends of mine 
when I lived in this part of Middlesex County, but young 
men to whom I was teacher and companion at the acad- 
emy in Westford. And as the exercises in the square re- 
call the memory of the first martyrs of the regiment, I 
feel, too, a just pride that two of them were born in my 
own native State. But far above all personal considera- 
tions is the tender, thrilling, eternal interest which the 
Commonwealth which I have the honor, at this time, to 
represent, forever feels in every soldier, every name, every 
event, that attaches to her Old Sixth regiment. It was 
the first to march to the front ; the first to spill its blood ; 
the first to throw around the national capital in its de- 
fense that living wall of patriotism which from that time 
forward never was broken. Its name recalls the heart- 
throb of Andrew, whose tender message, vibrating along 
the electric wires, electrified at the same time the finer 
wires of the soul of the whole republic, and whose noble 
oration over the graves of Ladd and Whitney here in 
your city's midst still echoes in your ears. It recalls, too, 
the beginning of the brightest part of the career of that 
distinguished citizen of Lowell, whose earnest political op- 



128 THE OLD SIXTH. 

ponent I have been and am, but whose patriotic, prompt, 
and incisive services in the war for union and liberty I 
never forget. And, finally, it links forever the nineteenth 
of April, 1775, and the nineteenth of April, 1861, — the 
villages and farms of Middlesex and the streets of Balti- 
more, — and has made it the reddest-letter day in the his- 
tory of American independence and equal rights. 

What an exquisite tribute it is to the immortality of 
the human soul, that what we call a great event is never 
in the event itself, but in the sentiment, the unseen, intan- 
gible, immortal idea for which the event stands! Prick 
my finger with a penknife, and the blood that flows from 
the wound cannot be distinguished from that which ran 
from the patriotic veins of Needham or Whitney. The 
ranks which marched that day through Baltimore are ex- 
actly, in material and character, like those of the Mechanic 
Phalanx, under whose graceful escort we have just paraded 
these peaceful streets. But the names of those martyrs 
and of the companies that stood at bay in the Monumental 
City are as eternal as the memory of Thermopylae, while 
we are only the ephemeral motes of a sunbeam. Show to 
Agassiz but the fragments of a bone, and to his illumined 
intelligence the whole animal of which that bone was once 
a part stands forth complete. And so mention hereafter 
to the world the crimsoned church green at Lexington or 
the blood of the Sixth sprinkling the Baltimore pave- 
ments, and lo ! there will lie outstretched the whole story 
of the Revolution, culminating in independence, and the 
whole story of the war of the Rebellion, culminating in 
universal liberty. They are the red milestones of his- 
tory. 

The words we use on these occasions are fervid. And 
yet how weak they are ! The scene we now recall will 



THE OLD SIXTH. 129 

never have its true grandeur till centuries hence shall 
give it a background and make it stand out like the glory 
of a cloud on the horizon at sunrise. Proud may you and 
your children be that you were actors in that scene. 
Memory, vivid as it is, can hardly restore it to you, — the 
intense patriotic rush of feeling at the north, — the elec- 
trifying call to arms, — the rallying at Boston, — the sym- 
pathies of friends, bursting from window and door and 
pavement, bidding you adieu and swearing an eternal 
gratitude, to which the Commonwealth has never been 
unfaithful, — the acclaim of city after city as you went on 
to the defense of the national capitol, — and the intense 
hour, twenty years ago this day, when you first met the 
mad torrent of treason, bore its insults and murder, and 
rolled it back forever. It was great because it was typi- 
cal. It was freedom confronting slavery, — loyalty against 
treason, — the civilization of Massachusetts, the dignity of 
labor represented by her mechanics, the common school 
represented by her young heroes rushing from farm and 
desk and shop, against the barbarism of caste. "Well may 
Middlesex County, well may these fair cities of Lowell 
and Lawrence, well may these clustering villages that 
contributed to that day, cherish with undying pride the 
memory of their heroes. For the Commonwealth I gladly 
bring her tears, her tributes, to mingle with your own, 
and I thank you for every pageant, every trumpet-blast, 
every drum-beat, every eloquent word with which you 
hand down for the education of her children these lessons 
of patriotism. 

Mr. President, freshly impressed as I am with the pe- 
culiar relation of the Commonwealth to the Sixth, — the 
most dramatic and memorable of her regiments, — forgive 
me if I say, with what pride I should place in the execu- 



130 THE OLD SIXTH. 

tive chamber, where sat Andrew who gloried so in your 
glory, there to be kept, except as from time to time your 
regiment or its association desire them, these your colors, 
in the disposition of which my judgment has been invited. 
It is no mere question of ownership. They are the com- 
mon glory of the Commonwealth. It was an acute law- 
yer — the meanest things are always attributed to the 
lawyers, Mr. President — who, when two fishermen dis- 
puted over an oyster, gave a half shell to each and kept 
the pearl that lay between for his own fee. I would fol- 
low his example and take these your pearls of great price, 
but not, like him, for myself. I would hang them where, 
henceforth, they will tell me and my successors, and legis- 
lature after legislature, and the whole people, the story of 
the gallant Sixth, — the story of the mechanics and farm- 
ers who showed what is this American people who are 
at once citizens and soldiers, and who know not only how 
to make and conduct a government, but how to defend it. 
Let them tell the story of the tragic march through Balti- 
more, — the story of the martyrdom of Taylor, Needham, 
Ladd, and Whitney, and of the services of those other 
still living heroes whom I forbear to name lest I omit any. 
And when, in some future crisis, Massachusetts again calls 
to arms, let her sons look up to them and feel their blood 
tingle to be worthy to rank with the heroes of 1861, as 
you, twenty years ago this day, proved yourselves worthy, 
in the judgment of your countrymen and of history, to 
rank with the heroes of 1775. 



ADDEESS 

At the Dedication of Oakes Ames Memorial Building, 
Easton, Mass., November 17, 1881. 

What a tender New England feeling is in the legend, 
engraved in letters of stone, which met our eyes as we 
entered these doors : " This building was erected in mem- 
ory of Oakes Ames by his children." One hardly knows 
whether such a splendid edifice reflects more credit upon 
the father to whose memory and in honor of whose great 
enterprise and public spirit it has been reared, or upon 
the sons who have exhibited such generous measure of 
filial love and piety. 

Oakes Ames sat in the council of John A. Andrew and 
helped him fight the good fight for freedom. Transferred 
to the national councils, it was the power of his will and 
genius that conquered the snows and peaks of the Rocky 
Mountains, and put an iron girdle round about the 
American continent in forty minutes. It was a gigantic 
work which hardly any other hand was strong enough to 
undertake, and to which to-day no man who knew him 
doubts that he brought also the patriotic purpose of bind- 
ing closer the Union, the peril of which he had just seen, 
and of putting it still more rapidly forward on the road 
of its mighty development. Here, too, at home behold 
memorials of his benevolence which stand all around us 
in this his native town, bequeathed by him to his sons in 
that spirit of enterprise which is their richest and best 
inheritance, and consummated by them in these comfort- 
able homes of labor. 



132 OAKES AMES. 

What a compendium of American history is such a 
wondrous American life ! The early struggles ; the com- 
mon-school education ; the apprenticeship to an humble 
trade ; the blacksmith's swinging arm ; the best pride of 
New England blood and ancestry ; the institution of spe- 
cial lines of manufacture and art; their steady enlarge- 
ment ; the outgrowth then of larger purposes ; the growing- 
interest in the public weal and progress ; the respect won 
from fellow-citizens ; the elevation to high place and oppor- 
tunity ; the ultimate conquering of fortune ; and the crown- 
ing achievement of success and a name ! It is a tribute, 
as are this occasion and building, not to American wealth, 
but to American worth and American growth. 

Yet let me turn again and congratulate the sons who, 
mindful at once of good taste and utility, have paid this 
tribute of their filial affection and gratitude to the father 
whom none could know as they knew him, and whose 
heart, if ever the sorrows which fall on all weighed it 
down, found life worth living in their love and in a loy- 
alty, which, surviving the grave, holds no trust so sacred 
as the honor of his name. The father's memory, — the 
memory of him who, remembering his own boyhood, de- 
termined that ours should lack no help that he could give 
it ; who stood to our youth the very soul of honor and 
nobility ; who led us by the hand ; who taught us our 
first lessons ; whose heart, as now so well we know, yearned 
toward us with so much hope and pride and longing ; the 
greeting smile of whose face and the clasp of whose hand 
come back to us in dreams ; and whom death even takes 
not from us, but only the more clearly reveals to us as 
the truest friend we ever knew ! — we each of us erect to 
our father's memory our monument, though not like this. 
With most of us it is a modest headstone, and the green 



OAKES AMES. 133 

turf wet with our tears. But we can all share in the feel- 
ing's that have given birth to this magnificent memorial, — 
not a cumbrous and curious obelisk fantastically cut with 
characters that time shall shatter and future ages be un- 
able to decipher ; not a cold, forbidding mausoleum, sug- 
gestive of death and decay, and rotting into the earth, — 
not a monumental arch to which the idle creeping ivy 
clino-s, and through which howl the barren winds, but a 
great hall warm with life and activity, for the meeting 
of townsmen and free citizens, where the public interest, 
which so stirred the heart of Oakes Ames, shall have 
voice ; where the welfare of the people shall be promoted ; 
where thrifty industry shall send its representatives; 
where refining amusements shall delight them; where 
orators shall speak, and song and music swell ; and where 
he shall still live for years to come in the hearts of the 
people of this town, and in the larger and more enlight- 
ened life to which his works so largely contributed. 



LONGFELLOW. 

At Unitarian Church, East Boston, April 2, 1882. 

It was a delightful thouglit to devote the April softness 
of this Sunday afternoon, this best day of our cheerful 
and sunny religion, to Longfellow, — to the companion- 
ship of a gentle poet, and to the influence of a spirit 
which now, and for time to come, will mellow our sad- 
nesses with tender hymns of resignation, will inspire us 
far up the heights with his song, and will fill our lives, 
though we grow to be bent and gray, with children's 
hours. We are here to sing with him, not to mourn him. 
Why is it that we used to shudder at this death, which 
now we find only strings the chords of a more compre- 
hending love, and opens full to view the sweetness and 
light which the dust of life half hid before ? Have you 
not looked at a picture, and only been blinded by the sun- 
beam that shot across it ? It was not till the sunbeam 
went out that the lineaments stood forth relieved and dis- 
tinct. What a poor and meagre chain of little-meaning 
links is this narrative of dates and events which we some- 
times call a man's life ! It is of little consequence, ex- 
cept for the dear association's sake, what was the name or 
residence or birthplace or age of the poet. Of what in- 
terest to us is even the great globe of the sun in itself, 
compared with the radiance which is its soul and which 
fills the universe with light ! Do not tell me that Long- 
fellow was born, and had honors and degrees and a pro- 
fessorship, and crossed the seas ; for these things come 



LONGFELLOW. 135 

and go, and now flash, now faint. But tell me that his 
mind was full of gentle and ennobling thoughts, for these 
live forever. Tell me that he loved children, and wrote 
songs for them and of them ; and let me hear my little 
girl, as she comes down the happy morning stairway, 
repeat untaught the verses which he made, and which are 
a bridge from his soul to hers, and from all human souls 
to one another. The material is nothing, and dies ; but 
the soul sings on, and, in these tributes which we and 
many another assembly are paying it, we are asserting and 
proving its immortality. When some poor creature, with 
nothing but a throne and a crown, dies, his subjects hail 
his successor, and shout, The hing is dead, long live the 
king ! When our king, the poet, is laid to rest, we may 
well cry. The poet is dead, long live the p)oet 1 For he 
succeeds himself, and is dead only to live, even on earth, 
a larger and more present life in his verse, and in the 
songs and hearts of the people. 

It is a poor commonplace to say that Longfellow is the 
poet of the people, for no poet is a great or true poet who 
is not that. And what a tribute is this to our common 
humanity ! Lives of great men all remind us not so much 
that we can make our lives sublime, as that our lives are 
sublime, if only we will not cumber or debase them. Not 
by putting into melody something that is beyond and 
above you and me, not by breathing a music so strained 
that it never trembles in our fancies and prayers, does the 
poet rise to excellence, but by voicing the affections, the 
finer purpose, the noblenesses, that are in the great common 
nature, — in the sailor up the shrouds, in the maiden 
lashed to the floating mast, in the mother laying away her 
child, in the schoolboy at his task or play, or counting the 
sparks that fly from the blacksmith's forge, in the man at 



136 LONGFELLOW. 

his work or, when he rests from it, raided by blue-eyed 
banditti from the stairway and the hall. So the poet 
teaches us not our disparity from him but our level with 
him ; not our meanness, but our loftiness. Let us not 
forget that he owes as much to those who inspire him to 
sing their thoughts, as they to him for singing them. The 
music he wrote is all lying unwritten in us. Let us sing 
it in our lives, which we can, as he sung it from his pen, 
which we cannot. 

It was a beautiful life. It was felicitous beyond ordi- 
nary lot. The birds sang in its branches. The sun shone 
and the April showers fell softly upon it. And, while he 
now slumbers, let us read his verse anew. With his 
hymns in our ears, may we, like him, leave behind us foot- 
prints in the sands of time ; may our sadness resemble 
sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain ; may we know 
how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong ; may we 
wake the better soul that slumbered to a holy, calm de- 
light ; may we never mistake heaven's distant lamps for 
sad, funereal tapers ; and may we ever hear the voice from 
the sky like a falling star, — Excelsior ! 



ADDEESS 

At the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary 
OF the Building of the Old Meeting-House at Hingham, 
Mass., August 8, 1881. 

It was to be presumed, as indeed the event has shown, 
that nothing due to the anniversary we celebrate, whether 
of tender memories, of grateful tribute, of lesson from the 
past or suggestion for the future,, would be left unsaid by 
an orator [Charles Eliot Norton] so fitting to the occasion 
alike in himself and in his descent from the first minis- 
ter who preached within these walls. Yet, even as when 
we honor some man distinguished for nobility of life, or 
greatness of achievement, or the ripe and venerated per- 
fection of age, we crowd around him to add to our spokes- 
man's word our own loving salutation or even the mute 
pressure of the hand ; so to-day, though we but repeat the 
thoughts already better spoken, we throng this ancient 
shrine, we venerate these ancient walls, we reach through 
the centuries to grasp the hand of Peter Hobart or John 
Norton and from full hearts we cannot but speak our word 
of gratitude and affection. In such a spirit we stand here 
no longer as we should stand in any other house. I look 
not alone upon the scene that fills the outward eye. These 
pews, these faces, these costumes, disappear, and in place 
of all this the unceiled rafters are over my head; no paint 
discolors the wood ; the rude carving of the axe is the 
only decoration; oaken, unbacked benches fill the floor, 
the women on one side, the men on the other; the musket 



138 HINGHAM. 

leans against the knee ; and the stern face of the English 
Puritan, clad in the garb of his day, a subject of King 
Charles, yet never a slave to him or to the forms of his 
church, looks back upon my gaze. 

As a member of this parish, though of a branch of it 
springing from the same deep root, — as a citizen of this 
ancient town, which in its municipal capacity, and at the 
common charge, bought this land and built this house, and 
for aught I know still owns it, at least so far as to be en- 
titled to share in its preservation and honor, and which 
for more than a hundred years here had its town-meetings 
and discussed great themes of public right and safety and 
of civil liberty, — and, finally, as a representative of the 
Commonwealth which counts in all its borders no church 
edifice so old and so sacred as this, I come to lay my gift 
upon its altar, and to pay my tribute to the men who 
raised its frame, to the men who have handed it down as 
a sacred trust, and to the men in whose loyal keeping it 
is to-day. Indeed it is not unfitting that the Common- 
wealth should have a special interest in this building ; for, 
when in 1681 a difference of opinion arose as to where it 
should be set, as such differences sometimes have arisen 
in the best regulated New England religious societies, it 
was the governor who, with unhesitating disregard of the 
wishes of the parish, took the matter into his own hands 
and ordered the house to be set on the spot where it now 
stands. And as everybody is to-day content with that 
and would regard any suggestion of a change as sacrilege, 
it is a significant illustration of how superior is the judg- 
ment of a governor to that of all others, and how much 
better he can direct the affairs of people than they can 
themselves. Alas! I fear his authority has since then 
been greatly impaired, and if he were now to interfere 



HINGHAM. 139 

with the slightest detail of parish administration, his occu- 
pation would soon be gone. 

The nineteenth century will not again see such an anni- 
versary as this, — the celebration of the two hundredth 
anniversary of the raising of a Puritan meeting-house, — 
no other so old still used for Protestant public worship in 
the United States. Of the five successive ministers who 
have preached from its pulpit, the last still lives, and is 
to-day the sole pastor of its congregation. Still more re- 
markable is the fact that, during the two hundred and 
fifty years' existence of the parish, six ministers span the 
whole period. And may not such a parish, yes, may not 
this town, may not Massachusetts, turn with pride to the 
list. One a graduate from Magdalen College, Cambridge, 
four from Harvard, and one from Dartmouth. Peter Ho- 
bart, the Sam Adams of the colony, known as an apostle 
of civil liberty even more than as a preacher of the gos- 
pel ; John Norton, who exemplified and taught the Chris- 
tian life, and bore a name honored from that day to this 
in the church and in letters ; Ebenezer Gay, who sounded 
the evangel of that more liberal faith which found its 
highest expression in Channing and its fruit in the abso- 
lute religious freedom of to-day; Henry Ware, another 
revered Unitarian name, suggestive of the refinement of 
learning and the culture of college halls ; Joseph Richard- 
son, who, preceding John Quincy Adams in Congress, thus 
reunited church and state; Calvin Lincoln, the beloved 
friend and neighbor of us all, as saintly in his life as in 
his face, whom God has spared to enjoy this day, and 
whom may He yet spare for many years to enjoy the un- 
bounded respect and love of all, irrespective of church or 
creed, who know him ; and with these, also, Edward Hor- 
ton, who has transferred the promise of his brilliant tal- 



140 HINGHAM. 

eiits from this to a larger but not a better field ! Well 
may Massachusetts hold in high and sacred esteem a 
church which through such men as Peter Hobart and his 
successors has, in the spirit of the highest independence, 
made its deep mark upon the tablets of civil liberty and 
religious thought. In that spirit of independence I find 
the seeds of our patriotic and free-thinking people and 
Commonwealth. In that I find, also, the cause of the sep- 
aration — a separation that to-day exists only in tradition 
and name, and no longer in the hearts of either people — 
which led to the formation of the society of which the ven- 
erable Dr. Henry A. Miles is now the honored head. In 
that spirit of independence, too, I find the seeds of the 
paradox of that toleration, blooming out from the most 
uncompromising intolerance, which has since made this 
land an asylum for mankind, not alone for all classes of 
men, but for all shades of opinion, — also of that free in- 
quiry which has laid the whole world, the world of matter 
and of soul, open to the touch of science and philosophy, 
— of that education which has made the dream of equality 
a homely fact, — of that politics which has made ours in- 
deed a government of all the people. Were it mine to 
speak at length to-day, my theme should be the relation 
of this ancient meeting-house to civil government and 
civil liberty, which have here always gone hand in hand 
with the worship of God whose liberty maketh free, and 
in behalf of which this parish has sent its sons to their 
country's defense alike in the war for independence and 
the war for union and freedom, — and not only to the 
field, but also to the councils of the Commonwealth and 
of the republic. I would speak of it as a school and acad- 
emy of training for the duties of the citizen, the whole- 
someness of social life, the integrity of town and state. 



HINGHAM. 141 

And is not this typified in the very environments that sur- 
round us this midsummer day, — this happy, prosperous, 
enlightened community of Christian homes, this activity 
of life and growth where once the quiet of the forest 
slept? Yes, and this clustering and beautiful burying- 
ground, where death loses its terrors in the softness of re- 
pose beneath the leaves, and where now sleep not only the 
first settlers of Hingham, but the good and great and true 
who came after them, — the early pastors of this church, 
— the Thaxters of provincial fame in civil and military 
life, — that revolutionary hero, General Lincoln, who re- 
ceived Cornwallis's sword at Yorktown, — and John An- 
drew, that governor so dear to Massachusetts that only his 
name can be spoken, but never expression given to the 
love she bore him, — all these a part of the spirit of the 
thing we commemorate, and so all one with this parish 
and these hallowed walls. Can we take in all this, and 
all that the day recalls, and puts us in harmony with for 
two hundred and fifty years, and not rise to higher levels 
of feeling and of purpose? In 1869 the pastor of this 
society. Rev. Mr. Lincoln, said : " Only twelve years are 
wanting to complete two centuries since our fathers first 
assembled for Christian worship) beneath this roof." Lo ! 
the circle is rounded and the centuries are full. It shall 
be but a span and some one will say, " Only twelve years 
are wanting to complete three centuries." And, almost 
as soon, the finger of time will point their fulfillment, also. 
What shaU they say of us ? I trust it will be a word, — 
as ours is to-day, not of reproach but of honor, — of a 
church still inspiring an enlightened and fearless faith 
and a pure life, — of a town still loyal to good morals and 
advanced education, — of a Commonwealth still fortunate 
in the happiness, the intelligence, the progress of its peo- 



142 HINGHAM. 

pie. Surely may these walls then still rise ; this roof still 
echo back the voice of the preacher and choir; these 
rough-hewn timbers still be wreathed with the memory- 
wreaths of 1681, 1781, 1881. Mr. Solomon Lincoln, a 
distinguished son of Hingham and her historian, loyal to 
her honor and to this her chiefest pride, is with us to-day, 
no one with a finer enthusiasm, not in person but in 
spirit and in the presence of his sons who have so admi- 
rably taken part in the exercises of the occasion. May I 
not, in tribute to him and in expression of all our hearts, 
quote the words he put upon the parish seal, and say that, 
whether the third century shall be fulfilled, or the fourth, 
or the tenth, Let the Work of our Fathers stand. 



ADDEESS 

At the Dedication of Town Hall, Hopedale, Mass., October 

25, 1887. 

The substantial, yet modest, building which we have 
gathered to dedicate to the use of the people of this town 
marks the civilization of our time and commonwealth as 
exactly as a clock tells the hour. It is one of the accu- 
rate measures by which the genius of history will gauge 
the moral and material status of this generation, the pres- 
ent condition of capital and labor in Massachusetts, the 
tendency of the creep of the overflow of wealth, the par- 
ticipation of the masses in the good things of the flesh 
and the spirit, the elevation reached in the thermometer 
of popular esthetics and ideals, and the conscious obliga- 
tion of abundance to minister to common human progress. 
The impulse that gave it birth has its roots in something 
deeper and remoter than any personal benefactor, any 
family group of sons of Israel however generous, or any 
distinctive sentiment of a single community. It is the 
necessary and inevitable evolution, the natural flower of 
the seed of the human soul when given opportunity to 
spring to the light and develop its own capacity for benefi- 
cence. 

Could there be a more striking contrast with the 
mighty edifices of ancient time than this modest building, 
not large enough to seat five hundred people ! Yet the 
contrast is all in its favor. No happy labor, no freeman's 
cheerful song, no blessed thought of earning and saving 



144 HOPEDALE. 

for wife and children at home, went into their founda- 
tions or made them the artisan's hall for the exchange 
of his toil and skill for an equal share in all the bless- 
ings of his time. Here not a stone or brick or joint that 
was not fitted by an American citizen. No secret springs 
open its doors. No long and darkened corridors lead to 
its inner chambers. No rotting mummy is to hide in it 
for five thousand years. No helmeted figure towering 
seventy feet into the air, and armed with shield and spear, 
suggests an age of superstition and of war. No arena 
under its balconies reeks with ancient stain of blood and 
slaughter. But the democracy of a New England town 
gather in it in the exercise of self-government. Its walls 
echo with the debate of freemen. Its consecration is to 
temj^erance, the arts of peace, village improvement, and 
the interests of a simple, social, neighborhood life. 

It represents three things in New England life. First, 
the accumulation of wealth, not by an individual but by 
a community, and indicative not of one rich man's pros- 
perity, but of the common prosperity. It is an example 
of good socialism. On this spot, some forty years ago, 
one of those communities, which spring up from time to 
time, and of which so much is anticipated by the enthu- 
siasm of their members, had undertaken, imder the sweet 
guidance of the venerable and beloved Christian pastor 
who is here to-day, to solve the problem of a happy, in- 
dustrious, and peaceful Christian brotherhood. It was a 
joint-stock association, sharing capital and profits, and 
run on common account. The result was a practical 
bankruptcy, averted only by a change which followed no 
longer any transcendental line, but turned to the line of 
hard, practical American business. For George Draper 
took the plant into his vigorous hand. An enlightened 



HOPEDALE. 145 

and liberal selfishness became, as it usually does, a benefi- 
cence to which a weak communism was as the dull and 
cheerless gleam of decaying punk to the inspiring blaze of 
the morning sun in spring time. The man of affairs was 
in temporal things a better leader than the priest, as he 
usually is, and as nobody will so emphatically assure you 
as the priest himself. A meagre manufacturing enter- 
prise that made a few boxes and cotton-spinning temples ' 
and employed a dozen hands, began that marvelous ex- 
pansion which in these few years, under George Draper's 
direction, has come to employ five hundred men ; has 
grown from an annual product of twenty thousand dollars 
to one of more than twelve hundred thousand dollars ; 
has built and incorporated a Massachusetts town ; has 
erected these trim, convenient houses and homes of skilled 
and prosperous labor ; has enlarged the original enter- 
prise into four great business houses, and embraces one 
of the largest cotton machinery manufacturing centres in 
the world. 

In the second place this building stands for the New 
England town-meeting. It thereby embodies the genius 
of American political institutions. If there be anything 
marked in the personal history of our American names, 
it is the independence of their success and career from 
all the ordinary props of what is supposed to be advanta- 
geous individual fortune. What aid were they to Abra^ 
ham Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Henry Clay, Horace Greeley, 
Henry Wilson ! It is upon the unmonopolized oppor- 
tunities of American life that the citizen only need rely, 
laying hold of those nearest at his hand to lift himself to 
the upper air. Here some of the best of them will be in 
especial readiness at his command. Ours is more and 
more becoming a government of public opinion, and of 



146 HOPEDALE. 

public opinion cumulated out of independent individual 
research, digestion, and debate. The accidental man in 
place is very much the involuntary agent of the public 
sentiment he represents — if a right man, the expression 
and agent of the best leadings of that sentiment ; if a 
wrong man, then of its hesitations and obliquities. More 
and more the Town Hall, or whatever the theatre of 
public utterance, should tend to the making of the right 
man and the elimination of the wrong one, for more and 
more, in fact as well as in person, the citizen is becoming 
the sovereign. And his sovereignty, under whatever 
guise of democratic forms, will be a terrific despotism, 
if he be not a patriot rather than a demagogue, a repre- 
sentative rather of the schoolhouse than the grog-shop. 

Undoubtedly there is in the near future that danger, 
which, like a weed springing out of the very luxuriance of 
fertility, springs from the very abundance of our pros- 
perity and freedom. It is the danger which a writer in 
a recent review calls " a new fire deluge of barbarism, 
bursting out this time not from the outlying forests of the 
north, but from the volcano of human passions under- 
neath our feet." The anarchist is already crying that the 
constitutional rule of the majority is as despotic as the 
tyranny of a czar. Against that danger the forces which 
this building represents and which it will concentrate will 
be a bulwark. That bulwark must be found in a condi- 
tion of society which, on the Que hand, extends to all a 
particij^ation in its government, and on the other, gives 
all an access to its blessings, and thereby secures the 
corresponding responsibility that goes with the adminis- 
tration of the one and the enjoyment of the other. It 
must be found in a harmony of the conservative safe- 
guards of property, institutions, law, and order with the 



HOPEDALE. 147 

flexible forces of progress. In other words, the function 
of this hall is to be a part of the Christian Church, as I 
doubt not it is intended to be, not in any ecclesiastical 
sense, but in the length and breadth of Christian civili- 
zation. 

In the third place, this hall commemorates a noble New- 
England life. George Draper deserves this strong and 
simple memorial. He was a strong, simple, massive 
character. There was granite in his foundations, and on 
it he erected a plain, substantial, and useful life. There 
was in him, as in this edifice, no attempt at useful orna- 
mentation ; but there were also no poor timbers. Every- 
thing was sound and square. He had that vigor of mind 
and purpose which commanded confidence and respect. 
You would not say he was a great man, as history applies 
that word to the exceptional few. And yet he was a 
great man, as one of that master class who dominate by 
force of purpose and persistence in achievement, and who 
lead, not because they point the way, but because, putting 
their broad shoulders to the tug, they draw a whole com- 
munity along onward. In religion, a liberal Christian ; 
in temperance, a total abstinent and prohibitionist; in 
politics, a Republican ; he had much of that quality of the 
Puritan which is still left in New England, and which, 
flowering out into the larger liberality of our day, has 
been illustrated by so many men whose faces, long famil- 
iar to us, have recently passed away. There is always 
satisfaction, a sort of poetic fulfillment, when men, com- 
bining brain and will, start, develop, and achieve material 
enterprises, master material forces, and accumulate mate- 
rial wealth as a sign of their might. Such was George 
Draper, as all who knew him bear witness. He was, 
indeed, the architect of his own fortunes. His business 



1.48 HOPEDALE. 

grasp was comprehensive. He did not sit in a tub, but 
ranged the broad domain of productive industry, and saw 
its larger relations. He dealt with enlarging results, and 
could be in no community and not set in motion the wheels 
of enterprise, manufacture, product. Where he was, there 
the massed mill-stream turned the wheel, and the artisan's 
hammer rang. 

Born in 1817, the son of an inventor, he added to his 
father's inventive genius the persistence that saw the in- 
vention wrought out to its complete result and profitable 
application to the processes of manufacture. A boy of 
fourteen, he worked in a cotton mill, and learned the 
principles of textile manufacturing. Three years later, 
relying on his own individual energies, industry, and 
pluck, and not on shibboleths, he rose to overseership. 
He served two years as a designer. He became super- 
intendent of the great Otis Mills. And he had meantime 
acquired what Richard Cobden advised the working classes 
of England would make them free of the labor market of 
the world, to wit, an accumulation of twenty pounds, for 
he had saved, not one hundred, but five thousand dollars 
from his earnings. This was the cash capital he brought 
to Hopedale, in 1853, thirty-six years old. But inesti- 
mably greater was the capital he brought of character, 
energy, skill, and an inventive genius, which created forty 
or fifty patents of his own, and put into operation three or 
four hundred. I have already referred to the change he 
wrought in this community, inspiring life out of death. 
It was a splendid achievement of growth. It is a poetic 
miniature of the growth of that great country of which 
he was so true a patriot, and of which, in his life struggle, 
he was one of the staunchest upholders, giving of his 
means to its cause, and to its military service his son, now 



HOPEDALE. 149 

the head of his house, whom it was his happiness to wel- 
come back from the battlefield, not on, but with, his 
shield. He was not of those who regarded his country 
as an orange, to be squeezed. He stood by it in peace as 
well as in war. He knew that it was no cold abstraction 
for philosophers and theorists to dissect and diagnose, but 
a o-reat family of living human souls, of men and women 
and children to be made happy and temperate and wise, 
clothed with the comforts of life and blessed with the 
refinements of homes. He knew that its foundation was 
labor, the manual toil from which his own fortune sprang, 
and back to which they still more and more contributed 
as they grew. It was from his own experience in the hard 
school of a laboring man, and from his later practical ob- 
servation of the whole career of American industrial pro- 
gress that he was for protecting his country in its labor and 
industries so that the wages of the one and the prosperity 
of the other should have every advantage legislation could 
give them. He was a protectionist, because he believed 
he had seen the withdrawal of protection followed by 
hardship to labor and defeat to manufacturing enterprise, 
and its return restoring both to prosperity. It was not a 
matter of theory with him, but of practical business ad- 
justment, just as it was in England with Cobden, who, 
had he lived in the United States, would have advocated 
the same policy, because they both sought the same end, 

the encouragement of home manufactures, — and, as 

practical men, took the directest path to it which the pecu- 
liar circumstances of each country suggested. 

To that policy of protection, with honest conviction, 
George Draper gave allegiance. He contributed largely 
and effectively to its literature and argument. His letters 
in the newspapers, his terse pamphlets, are familiar as 



150 HOPEDALE. 

household words. Of the cause of temperance he was, by 
precept, by example, by helping hand and purse, a life- 
long and earnest advocate and pusher. But his best con- 
tributions are in this village around us. Go forth and 
look upon the scene. Behold the farms redeemed, the 
sterile and rocky acres turned to fair fields, the two poor 
shops of thirty years ago replaced by twenty solid and 
capacious buildings, all alive with intelligent labor, and 
with machinery that seems almost intelligent, the product, 
largely, of his own genius. Behold a population sex- 
tupled in numbers and in possessions, all drawn from this 
plant. Could he speak, he would ask you, as you look, 
what man has he, the protected protectionist, robbed ? At 
whose expense, and by despoiling whom, has he wrought 
this result ? What farmer of the West, or anywhere, has 
he robbed by creating this new market for the farmer's 
produce ? What element of labor has he robbed by fur- 
nishing it this variety of employment here and elsewhere, 
and enabling it not only to support itself, but to lay by 
savings? What Southern planter and freedman has he 
robbed by inventing swifter means of buying and con- 
suming their cotton crop? What consumer the broad 
land over has he subjected to a robber's tribute by so 
developing his mechanical inventions that he has increased 
the supply, improved the make, and reduced the price of 
textile fabrics everywhere and for everybody ? 

On the 9th of June last this village was still. Its mills 
were closed, its labors suspended. For its people were 
laying the body of Greorge Draper to rest beneath the 
turf. Not gloomily, for was it not the poetic fulfillment 
of a fortunate life ? Great statesmen have lived to see 
no face brighten at their coming, or died counting all 
their honors lost because some later honor was not won. 



HOPEDALE. 151 

But when his soul went up, it may well have east back 
a look of calm satisfaction on the work he had done, 
— complete, because still in progress ; happy groups of 
families and homes ; the fading sunlight falling on church 
spires and schoolroom windows ; the air tremulous with 
the hum of happy and prosperous labor ; behind him the 
godspeed of grateful hearts, before him the " well done." 
To-day, again the mills of Hopedale rest, but for a sunny 
purpose. In keeping with his expressed purpose, his chil- 
dren have erected, for the free use of his townsmen, this 
Town Hall. We now dedicate it to his memory, and to 
the use of the people among whom and for whom he lived ; 
whose happiness and welfare is his best tribute ; and of 
whom in his career of toil and triumph, of whom in his 
simplicity of manner and living, of whom in his temper- 
ance, industry, and integrity, of whom in all that makes 
for honored American citizenship, he was so genuinely and 
exemplarily one. 



JAMES A. GAEFIELD. 

At Williams College Commencement, July 6, 1881. 

The days that cluster around our glorious Fourth, 
turning its glory into sadness, are days not of alarm but 
sorrow. The heart of the nation is broken and melts in 
tears, but its faith and courage are unshaken. For the 
second time in the history of our republic a president has 
been shot by an assassin. But this time, thank God, 
no organized political or social purpose or significance 
crouches close behind the deed. The great victim lies not 
a sacrifice to partisan or sectional malignity. The party 
of half the people whose gallant candidate he defeated ; 
the belt of humbled states which stood solid against his 
election, as they stood solid less than twenty years ago 
against his sword, and even the embittered malcontents in 
his own ranks had no hand in his murder. But all alike, 
in the better nobility of human nature, now stand in com- 
mon horror and pity over his wounds. Nay, the whole 
world, betraying its genuine faith and hope in the Ameri- 
can Republic, lifts its outstretched arms, and its hands 
are filled with the lilies of sympathy for us and for him. 
No decree, issued through the secret channels of banded 
socialists, made his assailant their slave and tool. The 
czar fell beneath the avenging and relentless pursuit of 
organized murder. Abraham Lincoln fell the last and 
noblest martyr of a civil war which, victorious upon the 
field, yet carried in its train the forked and hissing flames 
of treachery and assassination. But Garfield, in a time of 



GARFIELD. 153 

profound peace, when, aided by his own generous words, 
the sympathies of the Union were welding into their old 
fraternity ; in a time of universal prosperity, when the 
whole land smiles with the promise of plenteous harvests ; 
in a country the very atmosphere of which is freedom, — 
Garfield, the embodiment of American humanity ; whose 
name a year ago was on these walls as the hope and ex- 
ample not only of the scholar, but of the poor and hum- 
ble ; upon whom the only criticism was upon the boyish 
and bubbling sympathy of his nature ; who had risked 
his life in battle for his fellow men, and pitched his voice 
in peace to the highest notes of liberty, — Garfield falls 
bleeding beneath the crazy pistol-shot of a fool. The 
monstrous meaninglessness of the purpose robs the deed 
of its horror. But not meaningless is its lesson. If the 
will that did the killing was that of a maniac, yet the 
maniac takes his cue as well as other men. This time, so 
far as he took it from the nihilist's sophistry and the 
spectacle of the czar's death, let it be a warning. So far 
as he took it from the poisonous example of great party 
leaders dragging the honor of American politics into the 
mire of spoils and plunder, let it be a warning. So far 
as he took it from a system which makes the holding of 
civil office the reward of the most persistent camp-follower 
and go-between, let it be a warning. These are lessons 
which this awful calamity teaches. But it does not 
shake the foundations of that " government of the people 
which shall not perish from the earth." If the murderer 
was of sound mind, let his punishment be stern, swift, and 
sure. If not, or in any event, terrible as is the blow, it 
is like the lightning, which knows no respect of persons, 
save that the tallest monarch of the forest of tenest attracts 
and takes the stroke. Let no worshiper of more abso- 



154 GARFIELD. 

lute government find in this event a charge against our 
own. In the prophetic and reverent words of the presi- 
dent himself upon the death of Lincoln, " God reigns, and 
the government at Washington still lives." 

When the rumor came, as it came at first, that Garfield 
was dead, we recalled not more the president than the 
man. It is one of our own number that has been stricken 
down. It is the poor boy of our own youth, bare of foot 
and weighted with poverty, lifting his eyes through humble 
toil to the heights of American education and opportunity. 
It is our own classmate, revisiting the college halls and 
classic scenes of his youth to lay the wreath of his great 
glory at the feet of his Alma Mater, and to read in the 
loving eyes of his wife and children the honest pride that 
comes from the hand-clasp and congratulations of those 
who knew and loved him in early days. It is the comrade 
of our own veterans, who fought with him at Chicka- 
mauga. It is our own tribune, who, on the floor of Con- 
gress, upon the platform in many a brave and inspiring 
word to his countrymen, young and old, has spoken so 
nobly for humanity, for equal rights, for honest money, 
for high ideals and systems of political service, and for 
the national advancement. And it is to the wife and 
mother, not of the president, but of one of our own num- 
ber, that our tenderest sympathies go forth as we recall 
the ripe and bending years of the one whose brow is still 
happy with the inauguration kiss of her boy, and whose 
life spans at once the Western ]3ioi^eer's cabin and the 
White House, — a tragedy at either end, — or recall the 
other from school days tiU now, who has alike brightened 
his simple Western home, and to-day, watching at his bed- 
side, stands for the heroism of American womanhood. 
In sympathy with them both I offer the prayer which is 



GARFIELD. 155 

breathed by the whole Commonwealth, from Greylock's 
top to the pebbles upon the beach at Provincetown, — a 
prayer for the restoration to health and post, and for 
the return another year to these beautiful scenes with 
which his name and memory will be forever associated, of 
Williams' foremost graduate, Massachusetts' distinguished 
descendant, and the nation's beloved president, James A. 
Garfield ! 



ADDKESS 

At the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Piftieth An- 
niversary OF the Incorporation of the Town of Sand- 
wich, September 3, 1889. 

This is certainly a great day for Cape Cod. The spirit 
of celebration is echoing all along its sandy length and 
illuminating the waters that lovingly embrace it on either 
side. On the first day of last month we reembalmed the 
Pilgrims who made this shore the stepping-stone to the 
Plymouth threshold, and round whom, as their shattered 
bark came in from the perils of the deep, the Cape threw 
its great protecting arm. To-day we again honor the 
Pilgrim and pay our tribute to the fathers who planted 
and the sons who have watered the good seed which, 
under the blessing of God, has had this great increase. 

A few months ago we celebrated the centennial of the 
inauguration of our National Government. And yet what 
we were celebrating as a beginning was itself an accom- 
plished work, resulting not from any special cause or par- 
ticular event, but from the natural growth and develop- 
ment of a political and social system which had started at 
Plymouth and Boston and here in Sandwich a century 
and a half earlier. It was a system under which brave 
and intelligent Christian freemen, settling our coast and 
expanding toward the interior, lived in simple ways, pur- 
sued homely avocations, tilled the soil, built vessels, en- 
gaged in commerce, combined hard manual labor with 
good social position, enjoyed a democratic church, brought 



SANDWICH. 157 

education to the threshold of every child, inaugurated a 
republican form of government by representation, and 
prepared the popular mind by a thorough training of a 
hundred and fifty years for the responsibilities which na- 
tional independence brought. Thus it was that what 
seemed to Europe the miraculous spectacle of a people 
suddenly assuming seK-government and a constitution of 
equal rights, was really no stranger than that the oak, 
strong with the growth of centuries, should endure the 
tempest which sways its leafy top, but disturbs not its 
trunk or its roots. The institution of the New England 
town was the college where these students in local self- 
government graduated, and every man in New England 
was such a student. As I think of their work, the con- 
summation of which we celebrate to-day, and the story 
of which the orator of the morning has rehearsed, I look 
back through the long vista of years with a feeling of pro- 
found respect and veneration. You could, to-day, in other 
lands have visited shrines of grander fame, over which 
are temples wrought by masters of architecture, and gor- 
geous with the work of masters of art. You could, in im- 
agination, re-create from Greek and Roman and still more 
Oriental ruins the magnificent grandeur and glory of dy- 
nasties that have ruled the world. You could, in West- 
minster Abbey, hold communion with illustrious dead who 
won the most conspicuous glory of warrior and statesman, 
orator, poet, scholar, and divine. But none of these sug- 
gest to us the humanity and beauty and significance of 
the birthplace of a town like this. For here no broken 
column of fallen temples tells of the magnificence and 
luxury of the few wrung from the poverty and degrada- 
tion of the many ; no statue or shrine perpetuates not so 
much the greatness of one man as the inferiority of the 



158 SANDWICH. 

body of tlie people. Here rather began that growth of a 
free people, that common recognition in town organization 
of the equal rights of all men, which could not endure 
that any child should be uneducated; or that any poor 
should remain unfed ; or that any one caste should hold 
supremacy and another be ground under foot ; or that any 
slave should long breathe Massachusetts air. The civili- 
zation of other peoples has been a slow evolution from 
misty and barbarous beginnings, aided even by the inva- 
sion or conquest of other powers. Our fathers began at 
the summit, standing clear and self-sustained against the 
sunrise. There are no shadowy beginnings, no day of 
mean things ; no semi-barbarism, out of which there has 
been an exodus, but rather always a spirit of advanced in- 
tellectual and national life. No more generous enthusiasm 
for learning goes into your schools to-day than they put 
into theirs. They dotted your landscape with the spires 
of churches. I love these towns, and sigh that for more 
than half the people of the Commonwealth they exist no 
longer. Think what magnificent memories and associa- 
tions they embody for us, and how crowded is the record 
of every one of them with heroic names and with partici- 
pation in great heroic events. We are no longer the new 
world. We are venerable with age. Progress moves now 
so swift that a hundred years are more than a thousand 
in the middle ages. We look back through the vista of 
two centuries and a half and it is filled with great achieve- 
ments in behalf of humanity ; with great names of heroic 
men and women who lived not afar off, but were with us 
and of us ; and with such great events as the success of 
popular government, the emancipation of human thought 
and faith, the abolition of slavery, and the inventions of 
science, which have put the globe into the hollow of man's 



SANDWICH. 159 

hand and made the giant powers of nature obedient ser- 
vants of human will. They will some day scoop out the 
Cape Cod Ship Canal as deftly as a lady dips a spoon. 
With what ancestry in the world shall we fear to compare 
ours ? Our soil is rich with the ashes of the good and 
great, and our tribute goes out to them the more warmly 
because it goes not to the few ; not to an illustrious war- 
rior here or a great benefactor there ; but to the whole 
body of those plain, God-fearing and self-respecting men 
and women who so raised the general level of their ordi- 
nary life that any distinction among them which they 
made was the accident of circumstance or necessity, and 
any distinction which we should make would be an injus- 
tice. What trust have they not imposed upon us ? With 
them behind us, what is not our duty as the living, ac- 
countable citizens of this and other like communities to- 
day to those who shall follow us ? Shall we lower the 
standard ? Shall we not rather advance it still higher ? 
The world is pleading with us from our safe and high 
vantage ground to lend a helping hand to reach down to 
our fellow men and lift them up by help and by example. 
There never was a time when the moral instincts were 
more sensitive than now. Peace spreads her white wings 
over us. There is indeed no field on which to battle with 
bloody arms for civil freedom, for religious toleration, or 
against beast or savage foe. Our conflict must be with 
the insidious forces that war upon the moral sentiment, 
that threaten corruption to our social and political fabric, 
that invade the manhood and purity and truth of men, 
that impair the sanctity and happiness of home, or that 
would subvert the institutions that have made New Eng- 
land a paradise of living, as it is a paradise of varied and 
invigorating climate, scenery, and seashore. The obliga- 



160 SANDWICH. 

tions of the noble record along which you look back for 
two hundred and fifty years with so much pride, are not 
to seek for great opportunities remote and afar off, but to 
aid in the circle of our own immediate influence and abil- 
ity in upbuilding the citizen; in eradicating the subtle 
evil of intemperance that is honeycombing society and the 
state with its rot ; in diffusing the common education of 
the people, for which the fathers provided so sedulously ; 
in adjusting not so much the cold, economic relation of 
capital and labor, as if these were distinct factors, but the 
warm relation of man with man in the great struggle for 
happiness, in which every man is a capitalist and every 
man a laborer ; and in standing firm against any influ- 
ence or inroad that threatens the purity of democratic 
government. The civilization of the future is in our own 
hands. These great causes of temperance, of the educa- 
tion of the masses, of the purity of our politics, depend 
upon our discharge or neglect of our duty. If we dis- 
charge it, then are we worthy sons of worthy sires. If we 
neglect it, then is our celebration of these anniversaries, 
our praise of the fathers, our tributes to their virtues, but 
sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. 



ADDEESS 

On the Spirit of 1775, at the Centennial Tea Party, at 
Agricultural Hall, Hingham, Mass., August 12, 1875. 

We seek to revive to-nigiit, my friends, something of 
the spirit and circumstance of 1775. You will remem- 
ber that, only a hundred years ago, our fatherland — now 
magnificent in extent and wealth, with navies and a 
militia of millions at its command, with systems of edu- 
cation, industry, and growth that give it foremost rank 
among the nations — was but a slender strip of seaboard, 
its population less than that of a single State to-day 
which then not even existed ; so dependent on the mother 
country that the word home almost meant the British 
isles tliree thousand miles across the sea, with no manu- 
factures, with little commerce, without ships, with no 
military reliance except a farmer here and there, who had 
served a half summer in the French and Indian wars, or 
a damaged keg of powder and a rusty flint-lock left over 
from the waste of English regiments. Our fathers were 
then thrilling, not with the memory with which we stir 
so profoundly, but with the very impendence and shock 
of Bunker Hill and Lexington and all their portent of 
the bloody penalties of treason and of war threatening to 
slay the father and the first-born, and to devastate the 
little farm that thrift had earned with such hard toil. 
The historian and poet paint the combat and the con- 
gress, but they cannot reproduce the intensity of feeling 
that agitated every little village and fireside. Something 



162 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

of civil war, endangering our precious union as freemen, 
we saw in 1861, but its thunders rolled afar off, its light- 
ning rent the murky horizon only in the distant South ; 
and the experience it brought, appalling as it was, is not 
a fair test of that through which in Massachusetts our 
ancestors were passing a hundred years ago. 

We ask you to recall the sparse settlements, the fewer 
streets and houses, the village inn and store, the courier 
on horseback, the quaint vehicles of that day, the slow 
transmission of news, the timidity of those who clung to 
the royal garment, and the enthusiasm of those who were 
catching the inspiration of independence. You must re- 
member that steam' had then no other mission than to 
sing by the kitchen fire ; that electricity had but just 
revealed its mysterious spark on the bold knuckle of 
Franklin ; that no piano tinkled in the parlor ; that no 
sewing machine relieved the housewife's busy fingers ; that 
agricultural tools and processes were rude; that hasty 
pudding was good fare ; that the old time-piece in the 
corner ticked with a lazy beat as loud as the tap of a 
drum ; that the thanksgiving turkey wasted not its fra- 
grance in the oven of a cooking-stove, but turned on the 
spit over great generous fires of beech and maple ; that 
wooden chairs, with possibly a leather bottom, were a 
greater luxury than sofas of plush to-day ; that no loom 
wove cotton cloth, but men wore homespun, the product 
of the spinning-wheel turned by aristocratic mothers and 
daughters ; and women were elegant in gowns that now 
would hardly make the puffs on the overskirt of a cham- 
bermaid. The stage-coach was a wonder ; the tavern 
and the half-way house were alive with the cheer and 
bustle of arrival and departure ; everybody — even the 
parson — drank toddy, and a flush at the end of the nose, 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 163 

if not an ornament, was not a reproach. The newspaper, 
despot of modern civilization, was in its infancy, a rare 
and meagre slip ; and the interviewer who to-day gleans 
the very crumbs from your table and details your mild- 
est domestic infelicity in the public prints, was all un- 
conscious of his destiny as the great liar and bore of 
the coming century. There was no spelling book, and 
George Washington, who could defy a king, would have 
gone down before one of our primary school girls. The 
schoolhouse was a shed and not a palace. The plagues 
of Western grasshopper, lightning-rod man, and book 
agent, spared even to Pharaoh, stiU slumbered in the 
chrysalis of the unhappy future. 

People ate from wooden bowls and pewter platters and 
not with silver forks. They locked their doors, if at all, 
with bars of wood in sockets. They slept in unwarmed 
rooms. In the meeting house in winter time the vapor of 
their breath, condensed by the frigid air, helped waft their 
prayers to heaven. From Saturday eve to Sunday night, 
a great hush and soberness were over them, and on the 
Sabbath they rivaled the torture of the penitent's flagel- 
lation by subjecting adult and child to the infliction of 
two, if not three sermons, each longer than a president's 
message. The great secular occasions were the training 
and the raising. They were a sturdy, plain, economical, 
and thorough people, and the night would bloom into the 
rosy morn were I to set forth, even if I could, half the 
virtues which made them the germ of so noble a growth, or 
half the peculiarities of fashion and of domestic arrange- 
ment, which marked their thrift, and of which the women 
of Hingham have procured these interesting relics. 

You will see the chairs they sat in ; the tables at which 
they ate ; the clocks by which they rose and slept ; the 



164 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

caps, the shoes, the cradles, the very playthings of their 
petticoat childhood ; the dresses they wore ; their swords 
now eaten with rust ; the spurs of Washington ; the knife 
and fork of John Adams. You wiU see their miserable 
continental rag money — solemn warning to us to-day — 
inflated till the distress and riot it induced almost robbed 
independence of its value and made the sacrifices of the 
Revolution a mockery. Most perishable and yet most 
enduring of all, you will see the letters of business, of 
friendship, and affection they wrote. What volumes are 
in those fragile leaves, those trembling tracings of pen 
and ink ! You will see the signatures of Washington and 
Knox, Lincoln, Adams, and Jefferson. As you gaze, a 
hundred years seem but as a day, and you stand in the 
very presence of the fathers of the republic amid scenes 
warm with their personal approach. It is the substantial 
and the strong which passes away ; the delicate and in- 
visible which survives. Rare are the mansions of brick 
and wood our fathers raised ; but their words still live 
and burn. Their material surroundings have almost 
utterly perished, so that only a relic here and there, left 
in some attic or preserved by some kindly antiquarian, 
remains to win the imagination backward ; but their 
spirit, their thought, their intellectual and moral achieve- 
ments, have crystallized into the great foundation stones on 
which the structure of to-day stands with all that is best 
and strongest in our institutions, and are conspicuous, 
like the pedestal of a monument, in the eternal truths of 
the declaration of independence, in the constitutions of 
the commonwealth and the nation, in the very votes that 
slumber in the fading records of the clerks of this and 
of many another Massachusetts town. These are living 
nerves that never die, that to-day are as vital as in 1775 ; 
that in 1775 were as vital as to-day. 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 165 

This suggests the real purpose of this centennial tea 
party. It is not alone an occasion for merry-making, 
though it includes that ; it is not a mere tribute to de- 
parted days and heroes ; it is a recognition of living issues 
and principles which were indeed illustrated in the grand 
events and noble souls of the American revolution, but 
which demand now as then, which a hundred years hence 
will demand as now, our allegiance and service. 

I am not of those who magnify the past at the expense 
of the present. I believe we have not fallen below the 
standard of our forefathers, but on the contrary have 
added to their growth. Civilization is not only a hun- 
dred years older, but a hundred years better and grander 
than it was in their day. The thinker, the scientist, the 
scholar, the divine has stridden worlds beyond their hori- 
zon; our schools are of a scope and generosity such as 
they never dreamed of. John Harvard builded his col- 
lege better than he knew; our education, wide as the 
world in its sources and diffusion, stretches broad across, 
above, and below the narrow gamut of their instruction ; 
science and social progress, the arts, literature, the ameni- 
ties of life, have all expanded in America out of the limits 
of the former century into freer range ; even our politics, 
taking into view the tremendous growth of political prizes, 
demands, interests, and responsibilities, are as pure as 
theirs ; and if there are fewer examples of individual great- 
ness, — though I doubt this, with such names as leap at 
once to the mind in the church, the bar, the congress, 
the executive chair, in business, in every walk of life at 
the present time, — certainly our general level is superior. 
With familiarity comes contempt, and it is easy and vul- 
gar eloquence that vilifies the present and immediate. 
Assuredly we have no example of treason so base as that 



166 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

of Benedict Arnold, or of a spirit meaner than that which, 
in the Continental Congress and army, barked at the 
heels of the Continental commander-in-chief ; or of a cor- 
rupter state of affairs than Jefferson deplored. Uncom- 
promising Sam Adams is matched in Phillips, Garrison, or 
Sumner; nor can the past exhibit a purer martyr than 
Abraham Lincoln or a nobler hero than John A. Andrew. 

All this, too, though all this time our population has 
been multiplying, our life growing more artificial, our 
forms more intricate and liable to abuse, and our ports 
opening as an asylum to the inflow of foreign populations. 
If we seem to see more crime and corruption, it is because 
the area is larger, and the sharp criticism which holds the 
citizen and the official to their duty is keener and more 
searching. In the matter of temperance we are more 
abstinent and alive to its necessity ; in health we are 
better educated ; in the one item of human slavery it is 
boast enough for this generation that it has eradicated a 
cancer which the last century fostered and permitted. 

Yet true it is that the moral level is still a thousand 
times too low. All this material and intellectual progress 
has brought with it only a greater responsibility ; and no 
American, who rises to the true appreciation of his citi- 
zenship, and of his descent from the heroes of 1775, can 
for a moment reflect upon the startling and portentous ex- 
pansion of the nation, its vast wants, its intricate and pon- 
derous machinery of government, its temptations to cor- 
ruption in business, in politics, in every relation, without 
feeling that the great need, the one thing to enforce every- 
where, is the personal accountability of every citizen for 
the welfare and dignity and high character of his country, 
and for taking care, in the noble language of the Roman 
fathers, that the republic suffer no detriment. We can- 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 167 

not too earnestly impress this duty or concentrate too 
many influences in its behalf. For this reason it is indeed 
well to keep always before our eyes what is sterling, what 
is best in the past. Happy is it in the providence of God 
that the dead past does bury its dead, but — though the 
poet forgot to add it — keeps alive its living; that it 
buries the dead lies, the dead meanness, cowardice, trea- 
son, the dead infidelity, sin, and folly, the dead men that 
have sunk into benign oblivion ; but that whatever was 
heroic and divine, whatever was pure gold, whatever true 
man lived, whatever good and patriotic deed was done or 
word spoken, wherever a Washington gathered into his 
form all the beauty of manliness, into his soul all the 
grandeur of an exalted life, all these the past preserves 
forever fresh and immortal. I doubt not that Jesus — 
the divine poet — meant this when he bade the disciple 
let the dead bury their dead. Well may time drop the 
curtain hastily over its own decay. It is the spirit we 
want, not the form ; the germ and not the husk ; the prin- 
ciple and not the event ; the thought and not the man. It 
were nonsense to pay tribute to the memory of the Revo- 
lution, or to celebrate this Centennial year for its own 
sake or for any other purpose than to utilize the past in 
the future, to project the lessons, the experience, the bet- 
ter soul of the past into the soul of the future, to make it 
also better and grander. In the light of mere narrative 
and boast, the battle, the victory, the congress are idle 
tales that are told ; they might as well have been the fic- 
tions of the ^neid, or the pictures of the novelist ; and 
but for the aid which our dull imaginations get from ma- 
terial associations and the touch of flesh and blood, the 
personages of Shakespeare are more real than the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence ; the Ivanhoe of ro- 



168 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

mance is a knight better known to us than the youthful 
Lafayette crossing the ocean to couch his lance in the 
cause of freedom; and Colonel Thomas Newcome and 
Mr. Pickwick have exerted a more personal influence in 
forming the character of the Christian gentleman than Dr. 
Johnson or Washington Irving. But as examples of what 
true men have achieved and of what we may therefore 
achieve as well, — as exhibiting virtue, not as the mere 
ideal of the poet, but as the substantial consummation of 
a noble life actually lived, the characters and deeds of our 
ancestors are very fountains of inspiration. Therefore let 
us dwell on the delightful picture that history and poetry 
and the refining touch of a century, obscuring all ignobler 
elements, have drawn so vividly for us of their patriotism, 
their courage, their wisdom, their purpose, and achieve- 
ment. Let us note how, in those days, the religious ele- 
ment entered into all the relations of life and of public 
affairs. Not the mere form of prayer and sermon, the 
sanctimonious habit and look ; but that religious element 
which we feel in the character of Washington, which 
recognizes the dependence of the human soul — not as 
a speculation or a philosophy, but as an actual, experi- 
mental, daily necessity — upon an overruling Providence, 
acting always under a sense of its awful supervision, look- 
ing to it for a better inspiration and a loftier purpose. I 
feel profoundly that this is an element in the past which 
we cannot afford to lose ; that as a nation, as communi- 
ties, as individuals, it is vital that this faith, this depend- 
ence, this one great link, binding the weak to the infinite, 
lifting the soul above meaner levels to its duty to God, be 
recognized as the very needle of the social and political 
compass. Let us note, too, especially in these days, when 
the words union and reconciliation are the very dove and 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 169 

olive-leaf after the deluge of civil war, the generous co- 
operation and whole-heartedness that led the colonies, in 
spite of great distances, of remote interests, of diverse 
faiths and descent, to unite as one man in a holy cause ; 
nay, that united the whole world in a step forward. We 
may view the American Kevolution in a double aspect, — 
as the consolidation of thirteen colonies into a singcle em- 
pire, as also one of the progressive lifts of the civiliza- 
tion of the world at large. 

In either view, then, recall those eventful days a hun- 
dred years ago this summer evening. All British Amer- 
ica is aroused and uniting. Within the lines that circle 
from Dorchester to Chelsea are the bivouacs and camp- 
fires of the patriots, of the Puritan, and the cavalier, — of 
the sons of the Huguenots, the Highlanders, the Dutch 
burghers, — of the children of Erin and of Africa. The 
soldiers who fought at Bunker Hill — their laurels al- 
ready won — represent all the four provinces that consti- 
tute New England. In command are Stark and Sullivan 
from New Hampshire, Knowlton and Putnam from Con- 
necticut, and from Rhode Island, Greene, the noblest sol- 
dier of the war, dying in poverty soon after its close, and 
lying to-day in an unknown grave. The story of Pres- 
cott's stern resistance runs like wildfire. At Cambridge, 
on the 3d of July, under the great elm that bears his 
name and could almost hide his whole army under its 
shade, Washington takes command of the continental 
forces. To his call for supplies flow generous responses 
from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Caro- 
lina, and remotest Georgia. In August — this very 
month — come into camp fourteen hundred riflemen from 
Virginia, under command of Daniel Morgan, a magnifi- 
cent creation of bone and sinew, experienced in the In- 



170 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

dian wars, and destined to a glorious career in the army. 
Maryland, her soldiers always veterans in the years that 
follow, gathers recruits beyond the Alleghanies and sends 
them merrily over the mountains to be in at the siege of 
Boston. A regiment from Pennsylvania foUows. These 
brave cousins from sister provinces come marching hun- 
dreds of miles in hunting shirts and moccasins, unerring 
in the use of the rifle, and uniting the soldier and the 
woodsman. In no quarter glows a more generous enthu- 
siasm than in the Carolinas, where, fired by the example 
of Lexington, patriots rise in support of the patriot's 
cause, and where, romance blending with history. Flora 
McDonald, heroine of Scott's first novel, who in her youth 
had risked her life to save that of her prince, Charles Ed- 
ward, after the battle of CuUoden, now in her womanly 
maturity, a pioneer, with her Highland husband in North 
Carolina, is especially active in her patriotic efforts, and 
yet is only one of a thousand daring souls. Indeed, since 
the sun went down on the night of the 17th of June, the 
struggle has ceased to be a local one. It is no longer a 
matter of Boston Common or the stores at Concord. It 
has become a nation's cause, and the whole land, small in 
numbers, but vast in extent, springs with a united front 
and purpose to the defense of freedom, to the resistance 
of tyranny, to the impending, though yet unacknowledged 
assertion of national independence. By this twelfth day 
of August, not the Massachusetts minute men, but a con- 
tinental army, beleaguers Boston, commanded by a son of 
Virginia, its ranks recruited from nearly every colony ; its 
heart inspired with encouragement, and its achievements 
watched with eager interest from Georgia to the St. Law- 
rence ; and the ardor of its captains fully supplemented 
by the earnest spirits who, at their various homes, by pen 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 171 

and voice, are spreading the flame of liberty, as Clan Al- 
pine speeds the torch at the rising of the clan, and are 
cultivating among the colonists that common enthusiasm 
which shall afterwards develop into a more perfect union. 
At Philadelphia sits the immortal Congress, in which 
Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Rutledge, and representa- 
tives from every province inspire in one another the 
mounting resolution, which, to their eternal fame, though 
at the risk of the hangman's rope, lifts them, a year later, 
up to the Declaration of Independence. 

This is all trite, but it is worth while to remember that 
the American Revolution was the birth of our Federal 
Union ; that that Union, long before it was expressed in 
constitutional form, existed in the spontaneous and gener- 
ous sympathy which sustained the Continental Congress 
itself ; which bore the brunt of the war ; which year after 
year sent soldiers into the weary and disheartening cam- 
paigns and raised supplies to keep them ; and which en- 
dured poverty and death and fire and sword that the cause 
of American freedom might prevail. Without that union 
in sympathy first and in political coherence afterwards, 
our independence could not have been achieved. And 
now, after the gloomy hurricane of civil war that has just 
passed over us, shall we not do, what to-day we can, to 
renew the same responsive sympathy that wrought so 
much a hundred years ago ? Our civil war was simply the 
common cost we all paid for suffering a false principle, an 
unsound element, to inhere in our political union. It is a 
striking example of the utter inexpediency of mere expe- 
diency, of the penalties that are sure to follow any com- 
promise that recognizes and perpetuates a wrong. That 
common cost we have paid in blood, in treasure, in the 
best lives of the nation ; and the next step is the new re- 



172 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

union on tlie loftier plane instead of the old union on tlie 
lower one. How the imagination expands as it anticipates 
the results of this reunion, as it foresees the great, magnifi- 
cent South with its fertile fields, its immense seaboard, its 
noble rivers, its rich mountains and valleys, its fruitful 
climate, opening to the development of free labor, expand- 
ing under systems of free schools, its fetters forged by its 
own hands broken by ours, its sons reuniting with its an- 
cient friends at the North in the glorious achievement of 
the highest civilization and prosperity, as a hundred years 
ago in the achievement of victory on battlefields in behalf 
of political independence. Blessed be these centennial 
days that have brought to the monument at Bunker Hill 
the troops of a Southern State, laying garlands of flowers 
at its base and planting the palmetto of Carolina by the 
Northern pine ; and that have seen the soldiers of the re- 
bellion taught in the streets of Boston, what neither the 
newspaper, nor Congress and the National Executive, nor 
five years of bloody revolution could teach them, — what 
nothing but their own eyes could convince them of, — the 
fact that Massachusetts, as generous as she is powerful, 
has had no other purpose than to do justly and to love 
mercy; that she has never felt the spirit of vindictive- 
ness, but stands always ready to renew the attachment of 
the fathers ; but that never was an attempt so wicked, so 
full of folly and delusion, as rebellion against that govern- 
ment which the men of 1775, North and South, sacrificed 
so much to found and perpetuate. This year seals the 
grander and second consolidation of America. And nar- 
row is the soul and mischievous the memory that would re- 
call the bitterness of civil strife, save as a warning against 
the errors that begot it, or that would utter one word or 
do one act to stay the blessed work of reconciliation. 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 173 

But even this is not tlie whole significance of the Amer- 
ican Revolution ; this is not all we commemorate in these 
centennial occasions. The American Revolution was a 
step in the progress of the whole world, an impulse for 
which we should not be grateful to our American ances- 
tors North and South alone. Englishmen ourselves, not 
the least of our debt do we owe to England herself, whose 
tendencies for a thousand years had been reaching toward 
political enfranchisement ; whose finer statesmen, poets, 
scholars, and divines had always fostered the spirit that 
in 1775 found also expression in the dauntless faith and 
bold purpose of Sam and John Adams; whose better 
minds even in the height of the war were with us ; whose 
orators, like Chatham, Burke, Camden, and many others, 
espoused our cause and within the very walls of the Brit- 
ish parliament uttered eloquent and fearless appeals in 
our behalf ; whose generals, like Howe and Carleton, even 
when leading her armies against us, could not be indiffer- 
ent to the common ties that had linked us together so 
long ; and whose soldiers, though arrayed against their 
own countrymen, yet by prolonging the war till the 
cement of union and independence grew hard, became 
unconscious agencies in the accomplishment of a revolu- 
tion, that indeed lost England her colonies, but gained 
for her and for the world a successful example of repub- 
lican institutions, of a popular rebellion against injustice 
vindicated, and of the humblest citizen made in his politi- 
cal and social rights the peer of monarch and magnate. 
The intelligence of England to-day regards our Revolu- 
tion not as a victory over her, which as a mere victory of 
arms and military force we could scarce have secured, 
but as an achievement in civil liberty and growth the 
merit and fruit of which she shares with us, as the mother 



174 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

glories and shares in tlie attainments of lier child. No 
more loving or appreciative picture of Washington has 
been drawn than that by Thackeray in " The Virginians." 
Among the relics here to-night is the red coat of a 
British soldier found at Bunker Hill. For aught I know 
some burly Yorkshireman threw it off that hot June after- 
noon and, frightened by a Yankee blunderbuss aimed at 
the white of his eye, ran away to become another day the 
ancestor of that great-hearted preacher [Robert CoUyer] 
whose home and warmest welcome are in the land his 
grandsire fought ; who knows not whether he is of Eng- 
land or America, because he is of both ; and who per- 
haps will tell you to-night, in his own inimitable and 
cordial way, that so welded are the two nations in all 
good and generous things, that loyalty to either is loyalty 
to each. Nor must we forget the enthusiasm our strug- 
gle awoke all through Europe, — the aid that came from 
foreign powers, whether in the undisguised sympathy of 
Eussia and Frederick the Great, or in the substantial 
contribution of armies, ships, money, and munitions of 
war that poured from the lavish hand of France and less 
from Spain and Holland. And last, we must not forget 
those individuals who, fired by the story of our wrongs, 
emulating the examples of chivalry and romance, sped to 
our rescue : Lafayette, a boy of seventeen, forsaking his 
tender wife, abandoning his high position in the royal 
army and court, giving from his princely fortune to clothe 
and feed our soldiers, the bosom friend of Washington, 
the adopted child of America; De Kalb accompanying 
him to lay down his life for us at the battle of Camden ; 
Steuben who taught our soldiers discipline; Kosciusko 
the Polish patriot ; Pulaski, killed at the siege of Savan- 
nah ; and a host of others, no doubt animated by love of 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 1'75 

adventure and hope of fame, but underneath all recog- 
nizing the grandeur of the cause to which they offered 
their lives. With all these elements in and out of Amer- 
ica involved, it was indeed one of those epochs in the 
world's history when the onward flow of progress at a 
particular time and in a particular place rose into a tidal 
wave. In this broad view there is no occasion that is 
entirely our own and not the world's. It would be a 
narrow thing to celebrate the Centennial of the birth of 
American Independence if we did not recognize its results 
outside of America. God works in no limited way. All 
nature responds to the remotest touch. Not a wave of 
your hand but the poles vibrate and the moons of Jupiter 
yield a graceful response. Not a child cries in its sleep 
at nightfall but some bird at the antipodal sunrise, igno- 
rant whence the wave that tinkles in its ear, awakes and 
sings its morning song. And so in these grander events, 
none of them occurs but the world's history, its progress 
for good or bad, is affected. It is the world's centennial, 
and that I am soaring into no extravagance, see how a 
practical people propose to celebrate it. 

It is proposed to celebrate it by a World's Exhibi- 
tion and Gathering in Philadelphia in the year 1876. To 
aid this great enterprise is the object of this tea party 
to-night, and of a hundred others that will occur in the 
various towns of this Commonwealth. Certainly in no 
town more fittingly than in Hingham, the home of Gen- 
eral Lincoln, — now most illustrious of American names, 
— on whose shoulder rested the hand of Washington; 
whose foresight had so much to do with the triumph at 
Saratoga, though his wounds deprived him of participation 
in it ; who received the sword of Cornwallis at Yorktown ; 
whose aides, Shute, not yet through coUege, Rice, Bay^ 



176 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

lies, Barker, were of the blood of your best families ; and 
who quelled Shay's Eebellion less by military skill than 
by his prudent sense ; the town where Lafayette, at 
once boy and statesman, major-general and knight-errant, 
supped on bread and milk and patted the head of a little 
child, who lived to become the mother of our distin- 
guished village historian ; the town, whose honored meet- 
ing-house, the most ancient in the land, already old when 
the Adamses were children, is about to celebrate its 
second centennial, linking its worshipers of to-day with 
those who worshiped in its walls a hundred years before 
our independence ; the town where — not its least distinc- 
tion — lived John A. Andrew, who may well rank with 
any patriot of Revolutionary fame. It is an occasion per- 
fected by the women of the Revolutionary sort, patriotic 
as Abigail Adams or Flora McDonald, without whose 
help nothing in modern times proceeds, whether it be war 
or picnics, education or a tea party, — nothing except it 
be the ballot box, from which I am afraid we exclude them 
not because we doubt but because we are sure of their 
ample ability to take it into their own hands. It is an 
occasion preliminary to the greater occasion at Philadel- 
phia another year, but its object is the same, to awaken 
the memories of the past, to promote the admiration of 
patriotic virtues, the love of fatherland, the value of 
union among ourselves, the unity of Massachusetts, of the 
United States, of America, with the world. In the Cen- 
tennial at Philadelphia the scenes of a hundred years ago 
will be repeated. Again the leading spirits of North and 
South and East and West will come together over the 
mountains and rivers with all their variety of dress and 
habit and production. Again will cross the sea the Brit- 
ish forces emulous for the contest, invading the ports of 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 177 

Boston and New York, marching over the field of Brandy- 
wine, through the historic Jerseys and down from Canada 
by the lakes and the Hudson to capture us at Philadel- 
phia. Again will pour in upon us the resources of France 
and Germany and the enthusiastic interest of all Europe. 
But there will be no bloodshed; the sword has been 
beaten into a plowshare and the spear into a pruning- 
hook. Instead of the scream of the deadly shell is the 
whistle of the locomotive, emblem of the magnificent pro- 
portions of the trade, transportation, and commerce of 
the nineteenth century ! Instead of the roar of musketry 
are the din of looms and the buzz of machinery singing 
songs of the home, the fireside, the happy circles of do- 
mestic cheer ! Instead of the bugle blast to sound the 
charge is the music of the orchestra to lead the dance 
and of the civic festival to inspire the orator ! Instead 
of the groans of wounded and dying foemen are the 
friendly voices of a million hearts united in a common 
enjoyment and zest of the glad jubilee of all the na- 
tions. The contests and the laurels will be those of peace 
and not of war, whose bloody victories we glorify not 
for themselves, but because their justification is in their 
blessed fruition of peace. Is not the century worth some- 
thing, which terminates like this, whose hundredth year 
blossoms with reconciliation, reunion, material prosperity, 
and the cordial cooperation of the peoples of the earth 
in celebrating the triumphs of peaceful arts, of useful 
manufactures, of beneficent industries, and a high civili- 
zation ? Let us see that patriots are at the head of our 
forces, that our Massachusetts maintains her old conti- 
nental preeminence in the field and the council, and that 
Hingham's quota fails not for the first time. Let the Cen- 
tennial at Philadelphia give to the world an impulse in 



178 THE SPIRIT OF 1775. 

the grand progress of the age worthy of that it there 
received on the Fourth of July, 1776, when Washington 
was our standard bearer ; when Franklin was the wisest 
man after Diogenes ; and since when, all the leaders of 
the infant republic, its warriors in the field, its statesmen 
in the congress, have seemed to us, looking at them 
through the glorifying mist of the century, so grand and 
heroic that with fond exaggeration we say, there were 
giants in the earth in those days. 



ADDEESS 

At the Dedication of the Wallace and Converse Memorial 
Library Buildings, at Fitchburg and Malden, July 1 and 
October 1, 1885. 

This is one of those occasions which iUustrate the 
poverty and inexpressiveness of words and things, and 
the inexhaustible riches of the ideaL We cheat ourselves 
with the delusion that to-day we dedicate the magnificent 
walls and graceful proportions of a public library build- 
ing wrought out of wood and stone. Not so. Its ap- 
pointments are but symbols, noble and exquisite in them- 
selves but faint and fleeting in comparison with that 
deeper reality, — that reality of ideality, inexpressible in 
human language or architectural material, — the reality 
of the love of the human heart, of the charity of human 
brotherhood, of the eternal progress of the human mind, 
of the mastery of human industry, — of all which they 
are only the suggestion. If you would therefore trace 
the true sources of this splendid edifice, you will go, not 
to any plan of architect, but into the sacred recesses of 
the human heart. If you would seek its purpose, you will 
find it in no monumental impression upon the public eye, 
or against the background of the blue heaven, but in the 
generous, unrestricted treasures of instruction and soulful 
delight, which from this time henceforth it will pour out 
upon this community. If you would learn its lesson, it is 
that of the march of a civilization of all the people which 
stops short at no milestone of progress, and in which it is 



180 LIBRARIES. 

itself only a step. If you would follow its construction, 
you will think not alone of the generosity that gave or the 
brain that planned it, but of the varied and busy hands, 
representing every branch of mechanical art and honest 
labor, which have contributed to its rise from the first 
blow of the pickaxe to the nicest touch of the carver's 
artistic chisel. You, with a citizen's pride, have often 
gazed at its impressive architecture and read the poem of 
its beautiful interior finish. I, with a stranger's curiosity 
and pleasure, have visited it. I looked upon its massive 
walls, — its heavy blocks of brown sandstone, — its carved 
ornanientation. I entered its doors and stood alone under 
its arches. I saw the interminable series of vacant shelves, 
soon to bend beneath their precious weight of literature, 
— the panelings of quartered oak, — the great generous 
fireplace, suggestive of the old-time New England hospi- 
tality, — the tables yet bare, — the art gallery waiting for 
its decoration of sculpture and painting. Yet not alone. 
For, looking back through the vista of the past year, I 
saw those spaces alive with the workmanship of Amer- 
ican industry, ringing with the sound of the hammer, the 
trowel, and the saw, and I realized the noblest feature of 
our American system in this, — that the very labor and 
toil, even the crudest and humblest, which wrought and 
built and went into this library building, are them- 
selves the beneficiaries which are to j)rofit by it, and 
henceforth to enjoy its inestimable blessings, — building, 
indeed, better than they knew. Happy and fortunate the 
benefactors, who, touching in the chamber of their hearts 
an electric knob, thus set in motion the industrial activi- 
ties which bear such fruit, such mercy a thousand times 
blessed, for giver and recipient alike ; but I do them only 
justice, I am sure, and express only their thought, when I 



LIBRARIES. 181 

say that their happiest satisfaction is that this gift of theirs 
represents not their contribution alone, but the contribu- 
tion also of many of those in whose behalf they erect and 
dedicate it. 

But looking forward through the vista of the years to 
come, I was conscious still more of another realization. 
The mellow afternoon sun threw its glory on carved col- 
umns and groaning shelves. The evening lights flashed 
down their splendor. The alcoves swarmed. The tables 
were laden. The walls were hung with works of art. 
The sculptured marble seemed instinct with the breath 
of life. Best of all, the aisles and niches were alive 
with humanity. Men and women, little children, school- 
boys and girls, rich and poor, the man of leisure and 
the workman coming from his toil, came in and out and 
drank freely of the waters of life. For the value of 
this edifice is not in its architectural proportions and its 
cunning workmanship of frame and finish. It is in the 
magnificent use, the generous and ennobling service to 
which it is consecrated. Literally a treasure-house of 
knowledge, an inexhaustible mine of education, — the 
monopoly of no man or body of men, — it is thrown wide 
open for generations to come to the free common resort 
and possession of the people. A Roman emperor, wasting 
the substance of the state in selfish wars, or to feed his 
own luxurious depravity, tickled his starving subjects with 
now and then the pageant of a procession, the blood of 
the gladiatorial arena, or the distribution of corn as 
modern travelers throw coins to Italian beggars. To-day 
an American citizen, one in the front ranks of a free and 
equal community, architect of his own deserved and lib- 
eral fortune, loyal to the needs and ambition of his common 
citizenship, paying tribute to those foundations of the 



182 LIBRARIES. 

American polity which are the general intelligence and 
virtue of the people, wresting nothing from others, but 
giving of his own, opens in the heart of your city an un- 
failing well-spring of public education and delight. He 
smites the hard rock of this intense American industrial 
and material system, and lo ! the waters of life, rich with 
nutrition for the whole intellectual and moral nature, gush 
forth. They crystallize in a public library and art-build- 
ing that shall insure the range of published study and 
inquiry, free reading-rooms, and the treasures of science, 
art, and literature. If you would measure its value you 
will not reckon the land, or stone, or wood, or even the 
more than hundred thousand dollars that have gone into 
its construction. You would measure it, as I am sure 
the givers do, by looking along the expanding vista of the 
time to come. You will here see some future Bunyan, of 
rapt imagination, saved by its illumination of inquiry and 
truth from those terrors and hideous fancies of religious 
frenzy which, until the serenity of a loftier faith came 
to him, drove the young tinker of Bedford almost to the 
madness of despair, though I fear you would lose the 
vivid allegory of "The Pilgrim's Progress." You will pic- 
ture here the eager face of some later Abraham Lincoln, 
burnt brown with the sunshine of the farm, some Henry 
Wilson hastening from the shoemaker's lap-stone, some 
mechanic from his bench, the men and women of your 
industries, — all here enjoying a society of refinement and 
culture, a communion with the master-spirits of all time, 
an education in all the humanities. The myths of classic 
time will here be the homeliest of facts. The goddess of 
all knowledge will spring, full equipped, from the cleft 
of a mightier than pagan godhead, — the open volume of 
a book. The winged Pegasus that bears its rider to the 



LIBRAKIES. 183 

stars will be the leaves, — more precious than the sibyl's, 
— the leaves on these clustering shelves, from which no 
idle wind will flutter them. The sweetest poetry of writ- 
ten verse will be but as homely prose to the poetry of the 
actuality of this scene. Maud Muller's "wish that she 
hardly dared to own, for something better than she had 
known," will be realized in a companionship and sur- 
rounding such as the Judge's hand, had he conferred it, 
never could have brought. The "barefoot boy" will 
indeed have more than the " million-dollared " can buy. 
In the town in which I live we have, like you, a public 
library, founded by the munificence of a citizen. Walk- 
ing from it one perfect September day, I overtook a 
child slow sauntering before me. In her dress was the 
evidence of that pathetic poverty which seeks to hide its 
destitution with the mother's midnight needle and the 
prudent patch. Her broken and over-crushed shoes, a 
mile too large, were the evident gratuity of charity. But 
under each arm was a library book, and in her hands a 
third, held wide open, which she read as she walked. 
Passing, I caught, under the torn hat-brim, that intelligent 
child-face, traced with a pensive sadness, which is so often 
seen among the children of the poor. Apparently my 
salutation woke the blue eyes, which trembled up, from a 
dream in which all consciousness of the actual time and 
place had been lost, and in which the soul was living in 
the transcendent ranges of an upper world, — the world 
of the aspiring imagination, — the world of literature and 
mind, — the world in which all the good and wise and 
lovely are our society. Is it nothing to have conferred 
such a blessing on one of God's little ones, — to have 
made such an one the messenger of glad tidings to some 
humble household, which, under the gifts she was bringing, 



184 LIBRARIES. 

would gladden into happiness and instruction ? Measure 
the value of your public library ! Suppose for one mo- 
ment that its contents were blotted out ; that the world of 
books were consumed ; that the records of history, science, 
and fiction — the vehicles of fact and event, of discovery 
and truth, of imagination and poetry — were a lost art. 
Why, we live less in the present than in the past; less in 
ourselves than in the atmosphere and society which history 
and literature have created ! What man in this region of 
the earth is so open to you in his heart and thought and 
dreams as David, or Emerson, or Thackeray ? Of what 
man here do you know so much as of Washington or 
Bonaparte ? In whose poetic tendernesses or aspirations 
do you find half the sympathy you find in Longfellow 
and Whittier ? What drama of domestic or public life is 
half so familiar as that of Walter Scott and Shakespeare ? 
Which of your neighbors can hold you with the illumi- 
nated talk-torrent of Macaulay ? Is there nothing, too, to 
be said in praise of an agency which thus sweeps our vision 
and our interests out of the small and inbreeding confines 
of local friction and gossip into these world-wide and 
time-wide ranges of creative power ? Here in his single 
hand the citizen grasps the universe. Here he listens 
to the debates of Congress. Here he watches the move- 
ments of armies on Afghan or Egyptian fields. Here he 
studies the diplomatic contests of Europe, and looks over 
their shoulders into the hands of neo^otiatino- ambassadors. 
Here he is member of the senates of the world. Here 
he traces the comet in the sky, or cuts Isthmian canals, or 
explores the icy terrors of the pole, or in the exquisite 
realm of the imagination sings with the poet and inquires 
with the philosopher. Here solitude becomes society. 
The soul is supreme master of the realm, and man recog- 



LIBRARIES. 185 

nizes that he is a god. It is more than a school, — more 
than education ; it is absolute possession. The scholar is 
king, and every citizen is a scholar. His soul inherits the 
earth. No devil tempts him, yet his are all the kingdoms 
of the world, and all the glory of them. 

While this building is unique in its purpose it is yet — 
to the honor of our American civilization be it said — 
only in the line and easy evolution of our New England 
system. It is as much a flower of the Pilgrim and Puri- 
tan seed, as much a part of the providential scheme of the 
Mayflower and of Jolm Winthrop's landing, as much 
fused with the flavor of Harry Vane, as much a result of 
that vote of 1647, which declared that " learning should 
not be buried in the graves of our forefathers," as is Har- 
vard College, or our common school system, or as if every 
stone under its roof, every book on its shelves, every pic- 
ture upon its walls, had been in the mind's eye of the 
founders of Massachusetts. Still more does it partake of 
the elements of our later consummations, — our marvelous 
industrial growths. In its very amplitude it yet embodies 
the idea of that homel}^ saving economy, that intelligent 
thrift, that careful provision for future needs, which char- 
acterize New England. It embodies the idea of those 
great agencies and massings of skilled and citizenized 
labor, which at once employ a multitude of hands and at 
the same time stimulate as many activities of invention 
and brain, and so combine manual toil and intellectual 
genius in that splendid union of which our national insti- 
tutions are at once the cause and the result. Thence 
comes the steady expansion of general prosperity ; the in- 
creasing thriving of the body of the people ; the greater 
independence and comfortable self-support of families ; 
their homes in separate dwellings of their own, into each 



186 LIBRARIES. 

of which flows a growing tide of refinement, culture, and 
amusement ; the enlargement of public education, and the 
advancing standard of the schools ; the saturation of the 
press, and the consequent connection of local life with cos- 
mopolitan interests ; along with these the accumulation 
by individuals here and there of large fortunes to a good 
purpose, provided they be not wrenched out of others' 
earnings, but, on the contrary, constitute, in the very pro- 
cess of their accumulation, the fund of others' earnings ; 
and then at last the public spirit in some such individual, 
which, hardly more by his own impulse than by the com- 
manding general sentiment of which he is almost the in- 
voluntary servant and expression, appropriates a part of 
his fortune back to the public use and service. Can there 
be a finer tribute to labor than that thus, by its own in- 
herent law of action, operating under our institutions of 
political freedom, it ministers to its own nobler needs 
even in the very act of its own exercise, whether execut- 
ing the designs of the nicest skill and most scientific 
mechanisms, or faithfully hewing wood and drawing 
water, — its own hand providing for the education of its 
head and the refinement of its heart? Behold a marvel 
more wondrous than any tale of magical conjuration or 
oriental myth ! For not in the closet of the student, not 
in the shade of the cloister, not in the vista of the poet, 
not on the campus of a college ; but straight out of the 
busiest, most intense, hardest-headed and hardest-handed 
material concentration of industrial, manufacturing, money- 
making, labor-employing forces and enterprise, springs 
this fair flower of the gentlest humanities, this grace of 
art, this fountain of letters, this frozen song of architect- 
ure ! What is this but poetry and religion, — the tribute 
of the creature to God, — the obeisance of matter to mind, 



LIBRAEIES. 187 

of toil to rest, of the hard, practical forces to their mas- 
ter, the spirit of thought and vision, — the recognition of 
that spiritual, that mental and moral sovereignty which 
is the divine equality of all the children of God and to 
which all lower life with its inequalities of circumstance, 
its dross of riches, and its grime of toil, is the shell of the 
chambered nautilus ! 

Yes, this building typifies the true communism. Here 
is the most precious wealth, the best treasures, — as far 
above all material mint and anise and cummin as the 
clouds above the earth, — and all is for all alike. Ah ! 
that is the sweet assurance which letters, books, art, liter- 
ature, and the whole range of intellectual life give to the 
world. The vicissitudes of fortune, the fluctuations of 
business, the rise and fall of stocks and prices, the suc- 
cessions of good times and hard times, the inequalities of 
material lot which are inevitable, nay, are the very soil 
and stimulus of individual and social bettering, — all these 
cannot invade this realm, and he w^ho invests his happi- 
ness in this security will never suffer bankruptcy. The 
refinement and riches of study and letters, open alike to 
all, is one of the best lessons of this dedication, summon- 
ing the whole world to its communism of goods. The 
wealth of Croesus could not gather out of the past, out of 
the resources of intellectual treasure, what this new in- 
closure will hold. And yet all which this inclosure will 
hold will be, not the monopoly of Croesus, not his exclu- 
sive of you and me, but our common possession ; and the 
poorest child will here come and here command to his side 
statesmen, poets, orators, warriors, all the greatness of 
human career, to minister to his pleasure, companionship, 
and instruction. Under that vault will echo no song; of 
the shirt, but the poet's song of the woods, of enriched 



188 LIBRARIES. 

solitude, of the mind's paradise. And here, whatever 
his garb or trade or circumstance, the citizen student will 
learn that there is nothing so great as his own soul ; and 
that the master-spirits of all time, who have inspired all 
the volumes of all the libraries, exist not so much in them- 
selves as in their own ideals and in the ideals of those who 
have, with varying exaggeration and mirage, interpreted 
their deeds or words, reproducing for us poet, prophet, 
leader, and inspirer, not out of those limits and facts of 
certain years of our Lord, which are shifting guess-work, 
but out of those subtle and worshipful conceptions and 
mountings of the human mind, which are the eternal and 
only truth. He will learn that to him these great spirits 
are of most interest as even thus they reflect his own 
highest ideals and help him realize them. Nothing to him 
the royal robes or fragrant palaces of Solomon, but every- 
thing to him David's agony of pain or tumult of aspira- 
tion, because they are the pain and aspiration of his own 
heart. 

In the engrossments of every-day life, few of us appre- 
ciate what a universal blessing a library is. I have been 
surprised and delighted in my observation of our towns, 
to find how generally people of all conditions of life and 
degrees of means depend upon the public library, — of 
how many a sick room it is the light, — of how many a 
poor man's home it is the cheer, — of how much leisure 
and ennui it is the relief, — and how thoroughly well-in- 
formed and well-read the community is made by its re- 
sources. Little does he know of our New England cul- 
ture who thinks it confined to the select, or who from a 
thorough acquaintance with New England homes has not 
almost invariably found in them a wealth and variety of 
book-study, an acquaintance with the field of authors and 



LIBRARIES. 189 

their works, a literary gleaning and harvest, which a char- 
acteristic reticence often hides, but which are as surely 
there as the waters, whose flow is in winter time unheard, 
are under their mantle of ice and snow. But this fact of 
the eager and general use of the public library only the 
more emphatically suggests that while such a resource is 
a mighty instrument for delight and for good, we should 
not forget that it may be made an instrument, also, for 
evil. It is no small responsibility that will fall on those, 
who shall have this trust in their keeping, to select the 
fare it is to minister from its shelves, lest it demoralize 
rather than improve the public tone. We are nowadays 
especially careful what is the quality of the water we sup- 
ply or the food we distribute from the great resources of 
our metropolitan centres. Let us be as careful of the in- 
tellectual and moral supply which determines — and which, 
under the incalculable influence of a public library, so 
much determines — the literary material of the people, — 
the procedures, not into their mouths, but out of them, — 
the issues of the heart. 

I congratulate you upon the completion and dedication 
of this splendid building. It wiU be an unfailing spring 
of public instruction. It will teach the harmony and mu- 
tual dependence of our common interests. It will be a 
lesson of true citizenship. It is the tribute of industrial 
activities to the genius of letters and art and to the sover- 
eignty of the soul. It is an inspiration to labor and to 
the spirit of progress. To you and to your children it 
will be an endeared memorial of those who gave it. In 
no shaded seclusion, but here, — here in the heart of your 
city and of its all-enriching industries, — stands their 
monument, alike characteristic of their generosity and of 
its steadily expanding public spirit and demand. 



GOVERNOR ANDREW. 

Written for " Hingham in the Civil War, 1876," and Read 
AT the Dinner of the Commercial Club, Parker House, 
Boston, January 19, 1895. 

Hingham has the proud distinction of having been the 
home of John Albion Andrew, governor of Massachusetts 
during the entire period of the rebellion, and of now, in 
accordance with the wish he once expressed before the 
citizens of Plingham, tenderly cherishing in her soil his 
sacred ashes. It is fitting that his name should stand at 
the head of the list of her heroic dead. 

It is unnecessary to give more than the barest bio- 
graphical outline of one whose life and services are 
already a part of the national literature, imprinted on its 
brightest pages. He was born of worthy New England 
stock, at South Windham, in the State of Maine, May 
31, 1818. The comfortable circumstances of his father 
procured him a good academical education and a colle- 
giate course at Brunswick. He was a glad, wholesome, 
noble boy, with open face and curly head, and a brave, 
generous, and buoyant heart, fond of history, reading 
widely, with a taste for poetry and elegant literature, 
with no exalted rank as a plodding scholar, but with 
always a tendency towards broad views and humane senti- 
ments. Even in those days, the anti-slavery cause had 
touched his heart ; and the faint whisper of the approach- 
ing storm was awakening his pulses to that love of free- 
dom and respect for human rights which so signally 
found expression in his later life. 



GOVERNOR ANDREW. 191 

In 1837 Andrew entered the law office of Henry H. 
Fuller, Esq., of Boston. He pursued for twenty years 
the ordinary course of his profession, making now and 
then a stump speech or a literary oration, and constantly 
rising in practice and reputation. In December, 1848, 
he married Eliza Jones Hersey of this town, whom he 
had met at an anti-slavery fair in Boston ; and from that 
period, for a great part of the time, he resided in Hing- 
ham. Here was his home, here children were born unto 
him, here he walked to church and sang the familiar 
hymns and taught the Sunday school. Here his rare and 
sweet social qualities surrounded him with friends who 
loved and admired him ; and here his generous nature, his 
fondness for natural scenery, his love of children, and his 
strong social attachments, brought him some of the happi- 
est hours of his life. 

While residing in Hingham, Andrew was nominated 
for State senator, but defeated. He had as yet had 
no entrance into political service. Nevertheless, he was 
daily becoming better known as an intelligent advocate 
of progress, and for his strong anti-slavery sentiments. 
In 1854 he bravely defended the parties arrested for the 
rescue of Anthony Burns, and in 1857 was chosen to the 
General Court as representative of the Sixth Ward of 
Boston. In this arena he rose at once to distinction. 
Brought into conflict with Caleb Cushing, one of the 
astutest and most powerful debaters and thinkers of the 
whole country, he carried off the victory in the bitter 
struggle over the removal of Judge Loring. In 1859 he 
unflinchingly presided at the stormy meeting in Tremont 
Temple, for the relief of John Brown's suffering family, 
declaring that, whether Brown's enterprise at Harper's 
Ferry were right or wrong, " John Brown himself is 



192 GOVERNOR ANDREW. 

right." In 1860 lie was a delegate to the Chicago presi- 
dential convention, and contributed to the nomination of 
Abraham Lincoln ; and in 1861, having been elected, by 
a sort of spontaneous impulse of the heart of the Com- 
monwealth, as the one fit man for its magistracy, took 
his seat as governor of the State. In April, the rebellion 
already at its outburst, came the call for arms ; and, as 
if Providence had raised him up for the place, Andrew 
responded to it with that electric promptness, that mag- 
netic fervor, that soulful devotion, which, from that day 
forward till the end of the war, animated him under all 
circumstances, and imparted to the j)eople at large the 
enthusiasm of his own ardent nature. His great heart 
breathed in that now historic telegram to the Mayor of 
Baltimore : " I pray you to let the bodies of our Massa- 
chusetts soldiers, dead in Baltimore, be laid out, preserved 
in ice, and tenderly sent forward by express to me." 

Unsuspected powers at once put forth in him, his pub- 
lic addresses thrilled with loftier notes, his executive ener- 
gies expanded to the widest limit of his countless duties 
and labors ; the quiet citizen and plodding lawyer budded 
in a day into the grandest measure of the statesman and 
leader ; and it seemed almost a dream that our good- 
humored neighbor was indeed the foremost governor in 
the Union, the most chivalrous, if not the greatest, civi- 
lian of the war. At the assembling of loyal governors at 
Altoona, Pa., September 24, 1862, his was the leading 
spirit that urged new vigor in the prosecution of the cam- 
paign. When negro regiments began to be formed, he 
was among the first to organize them, prescient of their 
efficiency and gallantry in the field. In all that could 
stimulate the soul of the nation, in all that could wake its 
patriotic fire, yet none the less in the most watchful care 



GOVERNOR ANDREW. 193 

of the home interests of the State, of its institutions of 
charity and correction, he was always foremost ; and the 
activity of his life and labors was almost superhuman. 
Says the Kev. Dr. Clarke, " He worked like the great 
engine in the heart of a steamship." 

With the war, his term of office as governor expiring, 
he resumed the practice of the law. In 1866 he was 
chosen president of the New England Historic-Genealogi- 
cal Society. In 1867, with the same bravery and heroism 
that had marked him thitherto, though against the judg- 
ment of many of his friends, he began his strenuous and 
able assaults upon the prohibitory law of the State. All 
this time his broad national reputation, his great popu- 
larity, his sound judgment, his conciliatory and liberal 
sentiments, were marking him as the coming man in the 
national councils. It seemed as if years of new useful- 
ness lay before him. But he had finished his work. 

On the 30th of October, 1867, he died at his residence 
in Boston. His remains were afterwards brought to 
Hingham ; and on the 30th of October, 1869, after sol- 
emn services in the New North Church, at which he had 
formerly been an attendant, his Boston pastor, James 
Freeman Clarke, pronouncing the address, he was buried 
in our cemetery, near its crest, and not far from the Sol- 
diers' Monument. At his feet are the village he loved, 
the branches under which he sauntered, and the pictur- 
esque stretch of the bay over which he had so many times 
gone to and from his home. He rests at scarce the dis- 
tance of the sound of the voice from the threshold on 
which he stood when on the 3d of September, 1860, he 
addressed his fellow-citizens of Hingham, who had come 
to congratulate him on his nomination as governor, and 
in the course of his remarks spoke these hearty words : — 



194 GOVERNOR ANDREW. 

" I confess to you, my old neighbors, associates, and 
kinspeople of Hingham, that I could more fitly speak by 
tears than by words to-night. From the bottom of my 
heart for this unsought, enthusiastic, and cordial welcome 
I thank you. I understand — and this thought lends 
both sweetness and pathos to the emotions of the hour — 
I am here to-night among neighbors, who for the moment 
are all agreed to differ and all consenting to agree. 

" How dear to my heart are these fields, these spread- 
ing trees, this verdant grass, this sounding shore, where 
now for fourteen years, through summer heat and some- 
times through winter storms, I have trod your streets, 
rambled through your woods, sauntered by your shores, 
sat by your firesides, and felt the warm pressure of your 
hands, sometimes teaching your children in the Sunday 
school, sometimes speaking to my fellow citizens, always 
with the cordial friendship of those who differ from me 
oftentimes in what they thought the radicalism of my 
opinions. Here — here I have found most truly a home 
for the soul free from the cares and turmoil and respon- 
sibilities of a careful and anxious profession. Away from 
the busier haunts of men it has been given to me here 
to find a calm and sweet retreat. Here too, dear friends, 
I have found the home of my heart. It was into one of 
your families that I entered and joined myself in holy 
bonds of domestic love to one of the daughters of your 
town. Here, too, I have first known a parent's joys and 
a parent's sorrows. Whether you say aye or no to my 
selection, John A. Andrew is ever your friend." 

Governor Andrew, when in Hingham, lived on the east 
side of Main Street, in the first house northerly from 
Water Street, in the Hinckley house on the same and in 
the Thaxter house on the opposite side of Main Street, 



GOVERNOR ANDREW. 195 

in the old Hersey house on Summer Street, overlooking 
the blue water and sweet with the fragrance of clover 
fields, and also in the Bates house on South Street. His 
habits, like his nature, were simple. He loved to drive 
and walk ; he enjoyed the breezy trips and neighborly 
chat of the steamer ; his heart went out to children and 
won them ; he was especially fond of conversation, full of 
anecdote and story, and not averse to controversial discus- 
sion. His humor and cheer were always abundant. He 
sang old j)salms, he recited noble poems that dwelt in his 
memory, he was running over with the quaint history of 
old times and odd characters, and to the last there never 
faded in his breast the warm, glad enthusiasm of boy- 
hood. His sympathies were touched as quickly as a 
girl's ; each year he went to Maine to stand beside the 
grave of his mother ; each day some sad woman or poor 
boy thanked him for his humanity, for in him the unfor- 
tunate always had a helper and friend. No heart less 
generous could have uttered those memorable words that 
expressed his great and genuine humanity : " I know 
not what record of sin may await me in another world ; 
but this I do know, I never was mean enough to despise 
a man because he was poor, because he was ignorant, or 
because he was black." Add to all this his incorrupti- 
bility and honesty, his fiery patriotism, his unswerving 
sense of right and wrong, his pure glow in act and word, 
and we may trust, that, as his monument rises over his 
grave, it will point to the example of ]3urposes so lofty, of 
a soul so magnanimous, and a mind so sound, that it will 
be like a beacon light to guide the way of future genera- 
tions to the like achievement of the fullness of a noble 
life. 



ORATION 

Delivered before the City Council and Citizens of Boston, 
IN the Boston Theatre, July 4, 1882. 

It has seemed to you and your associates, Mr. Mayor, 
not unfitting, that, once in a century, a representative of 
the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts should speak 
for this, her capital city, on Independence Day. A hun- 
dred years ago, as now, their interests, their hopes, their 
patriotism, were one. If Boston seemed then to stand out 
as the proscenium from which the curtain of the drama 
rose, the scene was a rapidly shifting one, and the actors 
came not alone, like Sam Adams and Warren and Han- 
cock and Knox, from Boston. Like Lincoln from Hing- 
ham, Hawley from Northampton, Prescott from Pepperell, 
Heath from Roxbury, Gridley from Canton, John Adams 
from Quincy, Cobb from Taunton, Thomas from Kings- 
ton, Ward from Shrewsbury, and many others, they came 
from Massachusetts at large, and so identified the whole 
province and this its chiefest town, as they have been 
identified from that day to this, in the cause of liberty and 
progress. 

Mindful, therefore, of the close relations which have 
thus, at all times, bound Massachusetts and Boston to- 
gether, I thank you for your courtesy in inviting me to 
speak for you to-day, and I am here in obedience to your 
call. I have, as needs must be with a date celebrated now 
for more than a hundred anniversaries, and with its topics 
rehearsed till every possible variation has been exhausted, 



FOURTH OF JULY. 197 

no new word to utter, no illumination to tlirow upon the 
picture. But the day is our national birthday, and even 
its familiar story cannot be told too often, if it shall wake 
each year the patriotic pulse of a people so free that they 
are almost unconscious of the value of their birthright of 
freedom, or shall educate their children to admire and 
emulate the high spirit, the devotion to liberty, and the 
love of country, which inspired the fathers and founders 
of the republic. 

Let us, then, go back to 1776, and recall the scene and 
event which we now commemorate, never forgetting that 
they were only links in the chain which, under Provi- 
dence, had been forming for centuries, and forming, let 
us also, in justice, remember, under English law, and 
under the inspiration of English hearts. The separation 
of the colonies from Great Britain was the result of no 
single cause ; nor was it occasioned solely by reason of a 
chivalrous devotion to great principles of constitutional 
right or resistance to oppression. The vast territory of 
India, stretching over half a continent and sunk in the 
effeminacy and ignorance of centuries of stagnation, might 
for j^ears, and may to-day, submit to the rapacious sway 
of the British isles, — to the terror of a superior race en- 
riching themselves at its expense. But it was not written 
in the book of human destiny that the Christian civiliza- 
tion of the New World, the intellectual culture of New 
England, the growing material importance of New York 
and Pennsylvania, the high spirit of Virginia and the Car- 
olinas, — nay, that any of our colonies, proud of their lin- 
eage, devoted to an independent faith, founding among 
themselves institutions of learning, expanding apace with 
the very grandeur and extent of the new continent, and 
year by year conscious more and more of their rapid 



198 FOURTH OF JULY. 

growth and coming domain and achievement, — shouki 
hang as a dependence on an island in the Atlantic, more 
than that the ajDple, ripe and round, should cling to the 
stem and shrivel there in premature decay. In such a 
condition were the very essentials to cultivate the spirit 
of progress, of independent citizenship, and of the right of 
intelligent men, chafing under the stupid narrowness of 
the dolt who happened at that time to encumber the Brit- 
ish throne, to frame their own laws, and govern them- 
selves. The divine right of kings was not a doctrine that 
could thrive in such soil ; and no sooner did the colonies 
begin, as a residt of simple growth, to feel their power 
and to touch shoulder with one another in the sympathy 
of their geographical and political affinities, than inde- 
pendence became inevitable, and only sought occasion and 
apology for its own assertion. 

To this end had the instruction of the mother country 
herself led. From her own pulpits, in the songs of her 
own poets, in the words of her own orators, in the pro- 
gress of her own statesmanship, had for centuries been 
flowing influences that were lifting the individual man, 
leveling the accidental potentate, and proclaiming the un- 
importance of those who govern, and the overwhelming 
consequence and needs of the governed, even to the hum- 
blest citizen. It was a matter of indifference whether 
Burke and Chatham in England, and Adams and Otis 
and the town meetings of Massachusetts Bay in Amer- 
ica, lifted their voices in a British parliament or in 
Faneuil Hall or Pembroke town house. The words they 
spoke, the sentiments they uttered, were eternal truth, 
and had no local habitation or name. Under these cir- 
cumstances, allegiance to Great Britain was nothing but 
a habit and a sentiment. The moment it came face 



FOURTH OF JULY. 199 

to face in conflict with a right, it went to pieces like a 
bubble ; the moment it involved the sacrifice of a prin- 
ciple, the cost of injustice to the smallest penny, it was 
gone forever. I take it, there was nothing in British 
oppression that bore with special hardship on America. 
It is not likely that any malicious intent existed on the 
part of king or ministry to wrong and tyrannize over us ; 
and both were no doubt honest in their conviction that 
we were a stiff-necked generation, turning in ingratitude 
on the parentage that had borne and nursed us. The 
burdens at which we actually rebelled were slight in 
comparison with those which we had previously borne 
for years, especially during the wars with France. In 
comparison with those which, in our recent civil war, 
we inflicted on ourselves, they were next to nothing. It 
would be hard to point to the man or community which, 
prior to the outbreak of bad blood, suffered greatly, in 
person or property, from British tyranny. Even the Dec- 
laration of Independence, which we commemorate to-day, 
if you carefully peruse it, lacks something of that record 
of specific grievances and acts of oppression, which we 
should expect in a statement made in justification of re- 
bellion and treason. It would not be difficult to recite 
wrongs which other peoples have borne and still bear, ten- 
fold greater than those from which we wrested indepen- 
dence. We who, in recent years, to suppress rebellion, 
willingly endured excessive governmental interference 
with personal rights, and who saw multitudes of new 
offices created, and swarms of officials and standing 
armies in our midst, can hardly refrain from smiling at 
the complaints so grandiloquently put in 1776. Nor must 
it be overlooked that most of these complaints were di- 
rected against the very measures which were resorted to 



200 FOURTH OF JULY. 

to overcome what Great Britain regarded as treason, and 
which never would have been resorted to at all had our 
fathers been submissive. I do not mean that there were 
no grievances. Grievances there were, such as taxation 
without representation, though the actual taxes imposed 
were slight, and in any accustomed form the burden of 
them would have raised no murmur ; such also as the 
general control and management of provincial affairs by 
an agency remote and indifferent. But these were griev- 
ances, not so much invented and asserted by the mother 
country as inherent in the very organization of her colo- 
nial system. It was the instinctive revulsion which an 
intelligent and not inferior people felt for the natural 
unfitness and injustice of the British colonial system as 
applied to a vigorous and self-conscious community, that 
made any restraint intolerable, and independence a neces- 
sity. To my mind it is infinitely more creditable to our 
fathers that freedom was in this way the result, not of 
resentment, but of a high intellectual self-respect, and of 
the conviction that in the maturity of their growth the 
time had come for them to take their own destiny into 
their own hands. 

Once inaugurated the struggle leaped forthwith to the 
bitterness and desperation of the death-hug. If the pro- 
vocation w^as lacking before, it was lacking no longer. 
Fatally ignorant of the pride, the English thoroughness 
and tenacity of her own children. Great Britain adopted 
measures of coercion to which they could not and would 
not submit. And when there came the Port Bill and the 
Enforcing Act and the Stamp Act, which were intended 
to humiliate Boston and deprive the people of their famil- 
iar privileges, and place them at the mercy of a minis- 
terial board sitting around a table in London city, the 



FOURTH OF JULY. 201 

fatal step was taken ; the error could never be retrieved ; 
estrangement was only widening with each forcible effort 
to heal it, and the birth of the new republic was assured. 
The rebellion of 1861 failed, not because of a lack of 
brave men and devoted effort, but because it was unfit 
and out of joint with the moral and physical order of the 
times. Unlike the American Kevolution, it was a move- 
ment not with but against the lead of civilization ; and 
outside of its original limits never struck the spark of 
sympathy. In 1776, however, the common heart of the 
whole line of colonies responded to the peril of that one 
which was first to suffer. In the fall of 1774 met at 
Philadelphia the original Continental Congress, more 
with a view to adjustment than to independence. Its 
professions of loyalty were sincere, and its appeals were 
not to arms but to the sense of justice in the mother 
country. But the tide was stronger than those who rode 
it. The time for the friendly arbitrament of counsel and 
delay was gone ; and when the immortal Second Con- 
gress met in Philadelphia, in May, 1775, Patrick Henry 
had already thundered in the Virginia Convention that 
there was no peace, that the war had actually begun, and 
as for him give him liberty or give him death. Lexing- 
ton green had been crimsoned with the blood of the em- 
battled fathers, and Concord Bridge was already the 
beginning of our victories, and henceforth the romance 
of our annals. No congress could make history so fast 
as it was already making at Bunker Hill, in Gloucester 
Harbor, along the shores of Quincy and Marshfield, at 
the entrenchments around Boston, and in the spontaneous 
outburst of a common enthusiasm, which brought to the 
camp under Washington, from Carolina, from Virginia, 
from Pennsylvania, from Maryland, marching over the 



202 FOURTH OF JULY. 

mountains, and eager for the fray, the sons of sister colo- 
nies, the riflemen of Daniel Morgan, the Puritan and 
cavalier, the woodsmen and farmers, the children of the 
Huguenots and the Presbyterians. 

Carrying out the instruction of his constituents, Rich- 
ard Henry Lee, of Virginia, the author of the resolution 
for independence, introduced it into Congress on the 7th 
of June, 1776. It met with the enthusiastic suj^port of 
John Adams, who seconded it with a fervor and power 
that gained him the appellation of the Colossus. It was 
favored by the subtle and philosoj^hic Franklin, who not 
only comprehended the grandeur of the occasion, but 
smarted to repay, in the achieved independence of his 
country, and in the loss to Great Britain of her brightest 
jewels, the insults rankling in his breast, which, during his 
attempt years before to plead the cause of America before 
the Privy Council in England, had been heaped upon 
him, amid the sneers of a British ministry, by the sting- 
ing tongue of Attorney-General Wedderburne. It was 
supported, too, by the inflexible will of Sam Adams, and 
no man had from the earliest more clearly foreseen the 
result. On the other side was ranged the cautious Dick- 
inson, of Philadelphia, who, till that time the most influ- 
ential member of Congress, now doubted whether the 
hour for separation had come, and, doubting, was lost. 
New York, hesitating to risk its commercial existence, 
had instructed its delegates, themselves ripe enough for 
the work, to hold back. South Carolina voted against 
the resolution. Pennsylvania and Delaware were divided. 
But these defections were idle. The real resolution of in- 
dependence had long since been uttered. It had been 
the staple of every town meeting in America, the subject 
of every fireside conversation, the thought of every farmer 



FOURTH OF JULY, 203 

and mechanic ; and when the fifty men who assembled in 
that Congress, adopted by more than a two-thirds vote, 
in Committee of the Whole, on the first day of July, 
1776, the resolution of indeiDendence, they but gave ex- 
pression to the sentiment of America, as also John Adams 
expressed it in that unpremeditated burst of eloquence, of 
which no report exists except in the traditions of its mag- 
nificent boldness and vigor, and in the imaginary repro- 
duction of Webster. On the second day of July even the 
fears of the minority were overcome, and the resolution 
was adopted, without a dissenting vote, that the United 
Colonies were, and of right ought to be, free and in- 
dependent States. Tw^o days later, on the Fourth, the 
day we celebrate, the declaration of principles on which 
the resolution of independence was founded, drawn by 
Thomas Jefferson, then thirty-three years of age, and 
revised by Franklin and Adams, was presented and 
adopted, and, with the broad sign manual of John Han- 
cock at its foot, became the great charter of the war, the 
bulletin to England and the world of the justice and 
dignity of our cause. 

Kecall the quaint and homely city of Philadelphia ; the 
gloom that hung over it from the terrible responsibility of 
the step there taken ; the modest hall, still standing and 
baptized as the cradle of liberty. On its tower swuno- 
the bell, which yet survives, with its legend, " Proclaim 
Liberty throughout all the Land to all the In- 
habitants THEREOF." That day it rang out a procla- 
mation of liberty that will indeed echo through the land, 
and in the ears of all the inhabitants thereof, long after 
the bell itself shall have crumbled into dust. Hancock 
is in the President's chair; before him sit the haK 
hundred delegates, who at that time represent America. 



204 FOURTH OF JULY. 

Among the names it is remarkable how many there are 
that have since been famous in our annals, — Harrison, 
Lee, Adams, Clinton, Chase, Stockton, Paine, Hopkins, 
Wilson, Nelson, Lewis, Walcott, Thompson, Rutledge, 
and more. The committee appointed to draft the declar 
ration are Jefferson, youngest and tallest ; John Adams ; 
Sherman, shoemaker ; Franklin, printer ; and Robert R. 
Livingston. If the patriot Sam Adams, at the sunrise 
of Lexington, could say, " Oh ! what a glorious morn- 
ing for America ! " how well might he have renewed, in 
the more brilliant noontime of July 4, 1776, the same 
prophetic words ! There is nothing in the prophecies of 
old more striking and impressive than the words of John 
Adams, who declared the event would be celebrated by 
succeeding generations as a great anniversary festival, 
and commemorated as a day of deliverance from one end 
of the continent to the other ; that through all the gloom 
he could see the light ; that the end was worth all the 
means ; and that posterity would triumph in the transac- 
tion. 

I am not of those who overrate the past. I know that 
the men of 1776 had the common weaknesses and short- 
comings of humanity. I read the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence with no feeling of awe ; and yet if I were called 
upon to select from the history of the world any crisis 
grander, loftier, purer, more heroic, I should know not 
where to turn. It seems simple enough to-day. There 
is no schoolboy who will not tell you he knows it by 
heart ; and so much a part of the national fibre is it, that 
the schoolboy cannot conceive of his or any American's 
not declaring and doing the same thing. But it was some- 
thing else that day. The men who signed the Declaration 
knew not but they were signing warrants for their own 



FOURTH OF JULY. 205 

ignominious execution on the gibbet. It was the despera- 
tion of the punster's wit that led one of them to say, that 
unless they hung together, they would all hang separately. 
The bloody victims of the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 
1745 were still a warning to rebels ; and the gory holo- 
caust of Culloden was fresh in the memory. But it was 
not only the personal risk ; it was risking the homes, the 
commerce, the lives, the proj)erty, the honor, the future 
destiny of three million innocent people, — men, women, 
and children. It was defying, on behalf of a straggling 
chain of colonies clinging to the seaboard, the most impe- 
rial power of the world. It was, more than all, like Co- 
lumbus sailing into awful uncertainty of untried space ; 
casting off from an established and familiar form of gov- 
ernment and politics ; drifting away to unknown methods, 
and upon the dangerous and yawning chaos of democratic 
institutions ; flying from ills they had to those they knew 
not of ; and, perhaps, laying the way for a miserable and 
bloody catastrophe in anarchy and riot. There are times 
when ordinary men are borne by the tide of an occasion 
to crests of grandeur in conduct and action. Such a time, 
such an occasion, was that which to-day we celebrate. 
While the signers of the Declaration were picked men, 
none the less true is it that their extraordinary fame is 
due not more to their merits than to the crisis at which 
they were at the helm, and to the great popular instinct 
which they obeyed and expressed. 

And so we ask, why do we commemorate with such ven- 
eration and display this special epoch and event in our 
history ; why do we repeat the words our fathers spoke or 
wrote ; why cherish their names, when our civilization is 
better than theirs, and when we have reached in science, 
art, education, religion, in politics, in every phase of hu- 



206 FOURTH OF JULY. 

man development, even in morals, a higher level ? It is 
because we recognize that in their beginnings the eternal 
elements of truth and right and justice were conspicuous ; 
and to those eternal verities we pay our tribute, and not 
to their surroundings, except so far as we poetically let 
the form stand for the spirit, the man for the idea, the 
event for the purpose. And it is also because we can do 
no better work than to perpetuate virtue in the citizen by 
keeping always fresh in the popular mind, whether we do 
it by the art of the painter, by oration, or by bonfire, the 
great heroic deeds and times of our history. In this light 
it is almost impossible to overrate the influence on na- 
tional destiny of a legend or a name. Look back to your 
own childhood and tell me when you first grew mature 
enough to distinguish patriotism from the story of Gen- 
eral Warren and Bunker Hill. Who shall say that the 
tradition of Marathon and Thermopylae did not give us 
Concord and Yorktown, as it also gave independence to 
modern Greece, and glorified the career and death of By- 
ron, and made our own Howe crusader and philanthro- 
pist ? Who shall determine how far the maintenance of 
the integrity of our Union wiU depend on the memory 
of Webster, and find help in the picture in Faneuil Hall of 
his great debate with Hayne, as well as in his unanswera- 
ble logic ? And who shall say to how great an extent the 
love of country for the next century shall rise from the 
fidelity with which we keep alive in the public heart 
the memorabilia of our Eevolution and of our recent war? 
Wise, indeed, as well as loyal and beautiful, is it that to- 
day all America joins in this observance ; that at this hour 
a thousand orators are speaking words of high emprise ; 
that poets kindle the fire of patriotism, and that the he- 
roes of 1776 stand up from the past, grander and diviner 



FOURTH OF JULY. 207 

for the illusion of distance, and point the way to the high- 
est ideals of national attainment. The valuable thing in 
the past is not the man or the event, which are both al- 
ways ordinary, and which, under the enchantment of dis- 
tance and the pride of descent, we love to surround with 
exaggerated glory ; it is rather in the sentiment for which 
the man and the event stand. The ideal is alone substan- 
tial and alone survives. 

Let us avoid undue praise of the fathers, because the 
bare truth is tribute enough, and because it is so easy to 
exaggerate the past. Such undue exaltation of the good 
of other times has its demoralizing side. There is no ser- 
vice or manliness in belittling our own times and men. 
We can appreciate the past as well if we appreciate our- 
selves at our own true value. It is the fasliion of the hour 
— and not a new fashion, especially when partisanship is 
bitter and searching — to scatter the poison of aspersion 
on all surromiding character, service, and system. And 
yet, to my mind, there is occasion for thorough satisfac- 
tion with the result of the first century of the republic. 
It began as an experiment, doubtful and uncertain; it 
began with nothing more than a feeble union of sentiment, 
engendered by the enthusiasm of common military service 
and a common exposure ; it began amid a diversity of in- 
terests and of races, of religious and ethnic characteris- 
tics ; it began not only without money, but with a crush- 
ing burden of debt which it seemed to have no resources 
or means of paying ; it began with no hold on the cooper- 
ation of foreign powers, except the chivalrous sympathy 
that ended almost with the stirring events of the war that 
aroused it ; it began in a state of public demoralization 
caused by seven years of campaigning, and with a currency 
debased and worthless, and furnishing stiU a terrible warn- 



208 FOURTH OF JULY. 

ing against the rot which such inflation and depreciation 
cause in the character, tone, and truth of a people; it 
began with a discontented and disturbed soldiery, unpaid, 
destitute, and neglected, and smarting under the ingrati- 
tude of their country. Its early years were marked by 
riots and rebellions. It is claimed that nothing but the 
firm and enduring weight of the character of Washington 
held it together. Its constitution was framed and adopted 
only with reluctance and doubt. The morals of the peo- 
ple were not of a high order. The morals of public men 
were low. Aaron Burr was of a character so notoriously 
infamous, that to-day it is incredible how he could have 
been chosen Vice-President and brought within two or 
three votes of the Presidency itself. Hamilton was not 
free from reproach. Religion, when not asleep, was coarse 
and illiterate. Congress was the scene of debates bitter 
and personal to a shameful degree. The Cabinet was di- 
vided against itself. The mutual hate of Jefferson and 
Hamilton it would be hard to parallel. Vituperation, 
abuse, and slander poisoned many an honest name ; and 
though now, the mist of prejudice having lifted, we look 
back and see only what was solid and valuable growth, 
yet in that day it was said, as we hear it said nowadays, 
that corruption was undermining the foundations, and that 
democracy was a demonstrated failure. 

Read the journal of John Quincy Adams, and note what 
half a century ago was his estimate of the selfishness, 
meanness, vulgarity, and hopelessness of the public ser- 
vice ; how speedily he looked for the disruption of a brit- 
tle republic, and with what contempt he refers to Webster 
and Clay, and the names we have been taught to rever- 
ence. We must not be blinded by the miasma of present 
abuse which is always afloat. We must take deeper views 



FOURTH OF JULY. 209 

and a wider range. Look not at any year, but on the 
whole century, and see what has been the advance, what 
the progress in arts, in science, in human life and culture, 
in all that broadens the intellect and enlarges the soul, in 
all that humanizes and educates a people! The feeble 
colonies are an empire so magnificent in territory and 
population that the imagination cannot take it in. The 
imperfect league of 1776 is the majestic consolidated na- 
tion of thirty-eight States, each one an empire, and the 
whole the most magnificent and forward cluster of civil 
polity the world ever saw, — a very well-spring of human 
enlightenment and outgrowth in every upward direction. 
The national government, which was almost overthrown, 
even under the guard of Washington, by a whiskey riot 
in a ravine of the AUeghanies, has withstood the shock of 
a civil war which rocked a continent to its foundations, tri- 
umphing not so much by force of arms as by the popular 
sense of right, and rising from the convulsion stronger 
than ever, by reason of the eradication of the one false 
and diseased element which impaired it and which was, 
from the first, an element of weakness as it was of wrong. 
Think of what has been done in the matter of education, 
of public schools, of universities of learning for both sexes 
and all races. In science we have unlocked the secrets of 
the earth and the air and the sea, and made them not 
merely matters of wonder, but handmaidens of homely use. 
Religion has been refined and elevated, and the human 
mind, searching for divine truth, has risen above super- 
stition and cant, and, with knowledge for its guide, has 
reconciled faith with an enlightened reason. In all mat- 
ters of comfort, of use, of elegance, of convenient living, 
of house, and table, and furniture, and light, and warmth, 
and health, and travel, what thorough and beneficent ad- 



210 FOURTH OF JULY. 

vance equally for all, shaming tlie petty meanness with 
which, unjust alike to the old times and the new, we in- 
veigh against the new times and overrate the old ! At 
home it is with a feeling of satisfaction and pride that we 
turn to our own Commonwealth in every department of 
her public life ; in her spotless judiciary, which has never 
fallen below its best standard, and whose ermine bears no 
stain ; or her legislature, which has always expressed the 
popular will, and embodied in its enactments the reach of 
the popular sentiment. Shall I prefer the old times, when 
I see government made to-day the use, the culture, the 
salvation of the people ; saving those who are in peril from 
want and fire and famine ; looking after the little chil- 
dren ; caring for the insane, the idiotic, the criminal, the 
drunkard, the unfortunate, the orphans, and the aged; 
guarding the interests of the laborer; bringing to the 
help of the agriculturist the best results of science, and 
building colleges for the promotion of the noble calling of 
the culture of the soil ; guarding the savings of the small 
earners ; investigating the causes of disease, and securing 
its prevention ; giving to all the people comforts that were 
once not even the luxurious dreams of princes ; pouring 
out education like streams of living water ; maintaining 
great and generous charities, and extending the shield of 
its foresight and encouragement over all alike? Grant 
that since the rebellion of 1861, as years ago after the 
revolution of 1776, a period of war was followed by an 
extraordinary period of demoralization, resulting from the 
excessive and abnormal disturbance of the ordinary chan- 
nels of labor and industry, and especially from that infla- 
tion of our currency which gave rise to incredible increase 
of expenditure and debt, and from which recovery came 
only with a shock. Grant that corruption sometimes ex- 



FOURTH OF JULY. 211 

ists in higli places and in low ; grant that politics are too 
often turned into barter. Whatever the evil, it cannot 
stand against the discernment which is so swift to uncover 
and shame it, and which will permit it no concealment. 
And there is good token in the very sensitiveness of the 
public mind, which was never keener or quicker to dis- 
cover and punish fraud and faithlessness than now. It 
must not be forgotten that the republic not only was an 
experiment in its incej)tion, but is so still. We are apt to 
judge by the severe rules of criticism which we apply to 
completed work. We forget that only a few short years 
ago it was said that a popular government cannot succeed ; 
that the popular mind is not sufficiently educated to be 
relied on ; that a j^ure democracy has in it no stability or 
permanence, but must go down with the first tumult of 
popular frenzy; that patriotism will decay without the 
veneration that attaches to monarchy ; and that in a gov- 
ernment of the people, ignorance, fraud, brutality, and 
crime will rise, by might of fist and lung, to the suprem- 
acy. The wonder is, not that the republic is not perfect 
to-day in its machinery, its character, its results, but that, 
with its monstrous expansion from within and immigra- 
tion from abroad, it has fared so well, and that its achieve- 
ments are better than its founders dared predict or hope. 
Tell me what government, ancient or modern, has been 
more stable, or freer from convulsion. Who are our 
politicians, if not our presidents of colleges, our brightest 
poets, our most vigorous divines, our conspicuous mer- 
chants, our foremost lawyers, our leading men everywhere ? 
Our politics, at which we rail so much, are what we are. 
Will you say that there are startling evidences of neglect, 
when no pulpit is without its fervid appeal for loftier pa- 
triotism ; when no class graduates from college that half 



212 FOURTH OF JULY. 

its orations are not on the duty of the citizen to the state ; 
when our centennials fairly weary us with the demand, 
made by all who speak by voice or pen, for national purity 
and virtue ; and when no political party dares the popular 
verdict that does not proclaim and exhibit its purpose of 
reform in every branch of the public service ? Let the 
test of our hope or despair be not so much the severe 
standard of the very highest reach of the demands of to- 
day, but rather the modest trust with which a hundred 
years ago our fathers risked a democracy. Is it nothing 
that their perilous confidence in human nature, and in the 
ability and inclination of the masses to govern themselves 
aright, has been justified and not abused? Is it nothing 
that, ruled by a mob, our leaders selected from and by a 
mob, our laws the popular sentiment of a mob, yet such is 
the preponderance of the good elements over the bad, of 
the upward tendency over the downward, of order over 
disorder, of progress over stagnation, that the experiment 
has resulted in a century of success ; that, however imper- 
fect the scheme in some of its outward manifestations, it 
is correct in principle ; and that it has demonstrated the 
practicability and wisdom of a government of the people, 
by the people, for the people ? If there were none in the 
ranks except the men who have proved unworthy, we 
might despair ; but not when we remember that in every 
section of the country we still number great hosts of hon- 
est and able men fit for every political need or duty. If 
a period of national demoralization were followed by con- 
tinued indifference and acquiescence, we might despair ; 
but not when we see it followed by the indignant uprising 
of the better elements, the wholesome criticism of the 
press, the outcry of the poet and the philosopher, the 
sturdy and resolute reaction of that fundamental intelli- 



FOURTH OF JULY. 213 

gence and honesty of the people, which are the fruit of 
our system of free education, and which can always be re- 
lied on in the last resort to do the work of reform when 
the crisis comes. For one I feel no anxiety. I regard it 
as a sign of the permanence of our institutions, that to- 
day, when so many mourn over the sadder revelations of 
the time, a wiser philosophy looks through the ferment 
that is sloughing the scum from the surface and purifying 
the body politic from top to bottom. To be conscious of 
the malady, in a republic of free schools and a free press, 
is to cure it. 

It is easy to raise spectres of danger, and forecast per- 
ils that threaten to destroy the republic. But it will meet 
and beat them. It is flying in the face of nature and of 
experience to fear that man, with increasing expansion 
of his opportunities and powers, has, like a child, no hori- 
zon of promise beyond his present vision. Why should 
we at the approach of the next century, with its mag- 
nificent impidse onward, shudder with the same ignorant 
and ungodly distrust with which the old time trembled 
at the coming of our own ? We have brought no dangers 
that we have not averted, no perils that have overwhelmed 
us. Why whisper under the breath that in the near years 
to come men are to withdraw more and more from the 
grinding of unremitted and unlightened physical toil? 
Do not you and I enjoy whatever exemption from it there 
comes to us ; and shall not the humblest enjoy as much ? 
Will it be an evil when science, with its inventions and 
its use of the illimitable agencies of nature, the develop- 
ment of which is now but in its infancy, performs still 
more the drudgery of toil and lets the souls of all go 
freer ? Labor and industry, in the nature of things, will 
never cease ; but the progress of the ages will direct them 



214 FOURTH OF JULY. 

to higher levels of employment, never dispensing with 
their need, but rather adding to their dignity and to the 
happiness they return. Why, too, this terror lest those, 
who have not had the sweetness and refinements and ele- 
vation of leisure, shall have them more and more, as well 
as those to whom it certainly has brought, not harm, but 
culture ? Has the result hitherto been so disastrous as to 
make us fear either the bettered conditions of the masses, 
or their ambition for better conditions still? Faith in 
the common people is not a fine phrase or a dream ; it is 
the teaching of experience and test. They, too, may be 
confided in to measure and accept the necessities and in- 
equalities that attach to human living ; and they are not 
going to destroy any social economy which blesses them 
all, because it does not bless them all alike. Are not 
fidelity, patience, loyal service, and good citizenship, true 
of the kitchen, the loom, and the bench? Is there no 
professor's chair, no clergyman's desk, no merchant 
prince's counting-room, dishonored ? Does, indeed, the 
line of simj)le worth or social or political stability run on 
the border of any class or station ? The people may be 
trusted with their own interests. If it shall appear that 
any one form of government or society fails, there will 
always be intelligence and wit enough to fashion a better. 
Forces will come at command. The instinct of self-pre- 
servation counts for something, as well as the elements 
of goodness and progress which are inherent in human 
nature. And when all these unite, while there will in- 
deed be change and revolution, there will never be wreck 
and chaos. There will be fools and fanatics and assas- 
sins and demagogues and nihilists, and all sorts of in- 
sane or vicious dissolvers of security ; there will be con- 
vulsions and horrors : every fair summer the lightning 



FOURTH OF JULY. 215 

flashes and strikes. But all these are the tempests of the 
year against the unfailing sunshine and rain which make 
the blooming and fragrant garden of the earth. There 
must, indeed, be eternal vigilance and increasing zeal and 
endeavor for the right. But can there be nobler or finer 
service than to contribute these ? Or, if you, sleek and 
well-to-do and jealous of your fortunate share of good 
things, fear lest frenzy and drunkenness and vice invade 
your domain, will you not stop sneering at the reformers, 
who, in whatever line or of whatever sex or social scale, 
are trying to breast the torrent, and give them your coun- 
tenance, your help, and your right arm ? Shall our fore- 
cast of imminent or coming perils unnerve us and awake 
only a whine of despair ; or shall it rather put us to our 
mettle, and to the development of the better influences 
which always have averted and always will avert dis- 
aster ? 

Grant the great accumulations of individual and cor- 
porate wealth, with its larger luxuries ; grant this, and, 
if there be danger in it, — as there is, — be on your 
guard. But is it all evil ? Have the multitude been cor- 
respondingly straitened and deprived ? Are the homes, 
the food, the clothing, the literary and aesthetic tastes, 
and the amusements of the toilers, more limited, or do 
they share in the general betterment? Is the public 
library closed to them ? Is there no newspaper — a 
library in itself — in their hands each day ? Have they 
less or dimmer light to read by than before ; or scantier 
means of conveyance from the city to the fields and 
beach ; or more meagre communication with the great 
orbit of the living world, its interests, its activities, its 
resources ? May we not yet find even in this bugbear 
of excessive wealth, with its perilous luxury emasculating 



216 FOURTH OF JULY. 

those who enjoy it and tempting those who ape it, the 
seeds of the evil's own cure ? If it be not so, it is the 
first instance of a corruption which has not wrought its 
own better life. Need we, indeed even now, look far off 
for a day when the vulgar gluttony of wealth will be the 
disdain of good manners and high character, not worth its 
own heavy weight, and no longer the aim of a better and 
finer time? Is happiness, or was it ever, correspondent 
with wealth or luxury ? Are not most men superior to 
either, or to the fever for them? I do not think it too 
much to say, that in the time to come, " Give me neither 
poverty nor riches " will be not only the wise man's 
prayer, but the " smart " man's maxim and the aristo- 
crat's choice. What refreshment, even to-day, to turn to 
examples of wealth, — of which so many are illustrious in 
your own city, — which finds its most gracious use and its 
most indulgent luxury in cooling streams of charity and 
beneficence flowing broadcast amid the parched lowlands 
of want and ignorance and wrong ! Under our system 
the easy mobility of wealth is its own no small safeguard 
and regulator. Not only do fortunes come and go ; not 
only from all rounds of the social ladder do the million- 
aires spring ; but, even while retained in the same hand, 
wealth does not lie inactive and embayed, but is coursing 
everywhere, a trust rather than an exclusive possession 
to its owner, employing, supporting, enriching, a thousand 
other men. To assail it is to attack not him, but them. 
It is engaged in their service more than in his. It has 
no existence except in this very subservience to the gen- 
eral use. Destroy this function, and it is but a corpse, 
worth no man's having. Fortunate is the community, 
and men do not decay, where, under our institutions, 
wealth accumulates. It cannot fill one hand without 



FOURTH OF JULY. 217 

overflowing into every other. It cannot live to itself 
alone. 

Danger and peril enough indeed ; need everywhere for 
safeguards and forethought ! But the world is a failure 
and man is a lie if there be not in him the capacity to 
rise to his own might, and to keep pace with his own 
growth. Are education, science, is this godlike mind, 
are the soul and the moral nature, to count for nothing 
but their own disaster? Is there no future manhood to 
meet the future crisis ? Is there no God ? As the dead 
past buries its dead, so the unborn future will solve its own 
needs. Ours it is to do the duty of the present hour. 

And to that high duty with what a trumpet-caU are we 
summoned ! I would at once avoid indiscriminate praise 
or blame of the things of to-day. I would not so assail 
our national and social and political character and men 
and institutions as to destroy our seK-respect ; nor, on 
the other hand, would I shut my eyes to the glaring de- 
fects that exist, and that are a reproach to any people. 
There is rust upon our escutcheon. Our civil service 
cries aloud for the reform which has begun to come, and 
which is already shaping the action of politicians and 
departments that are unconsciously obeying the public 
sentiment it has created. There is sometimes lack of 
homely honesty in our touch upon the public money; 
there is dishonor in high places ; there are frauds in 
finance. But these are evils not permanent in the heart 
of a progressive people. They are only incidental to in- 
complete systems. They suggest what would be a nobler 
and more vital theme for us at this time than even the 
Declaration of Independence of 1776 ; and that is a new 
and present declaration of independence, which, if pro- 
claimed to the world in honesty and sincerity, would 



218 FOURTH OF JULY. 

make some Jolm Adams of to-day prophesy that it would 
be henceforward celebrated by succeeding generations 
from one end of the continent to the other. 

The century just past was a century of military and 
political growth; the century opening this hour will be 
one of moral and scientific growth. The parties of the 
future can only succeed if they embody some great moral 
element and purpose. Let us have here and now a new 
declaration of independence, — independence from igno- 
rance and preJLidice and narrowness and false restraint ; 
from the ruthless machinery of war, so that we may have 
the beneficent influences of peace ; from the clumsiness 
of any lingering barbarism, so that we may have the full 
development of a Christian civilization ; from the crimes 
that infest and retard society; from intemperance and 
drunkenness and false gods; from low views of public 
trust. No declaration of the fathers would compare for 
a moment with a declaration of the high moral purposes 
that beckon us on to a loftier national life. The field 
is unlimited ; the opportunity for growth inexhaustible. 
Only let us realize the absolute duty of impressing on 
the leading classes, as we call them, on the educated and 
religious classes, at least, the necessity of their projecting 
themselves out of the ranks which need no physician into 
the ranks which do. I do not mean the nonsense of class 
distinctions ; I mean that whoever is a foremost man in 
any sphere, in the professions, in trade or elsewhere, who- 
ever leads in politics, in church, in society, in the shop, 
must feel that on his shoulders alone rests the public 
safety. 

There must be the sense of personal obligation on every 
man whose natural power or happy opportunities have 
given him a lift in any wise above the rest. Virtue, pub- 



FOURTH OF JULY. 219 

lie and private, will beeome easy and popular when it is 
the badge and inspiration of the leaders ; and good in- 
fluences from the top will permeate through the whole 
body politic as rain filters through the earth and freshens 
it with verdure and beauty and fertility. I would em- 
phasize, more than anything else, the duty of the enlight- 
ened classes to throw all their energies into the popu- 
lar arena. Why should the ingenuous youth, fresh from 
college, dream of Pericles swaying with consummate ad- 
dress and eloquence the petty democracy of Athens, and 
himself shun the town house where, in a golden age be- 
side which the age of Pericles is brass, is moulded the 
destiny of his own magnificent republic ? Why kindle 
with the invective of Cicero, or the wit of Aristophanes, 
and himself be too dainty to lift voice or finger to banish 
Catiline and Cleon from manipulating the honor, the 
integrity, the achievement, of the fatherland, bequeathed 
to him in sacred trust by his own heroic ancestors? 
Little sympathy is to be felt with the spirit that stands 
aloof and rails at the clumsy work of a government by 
the people, who, on their part, invariably welcome the 
approach of the man of culture, and will give him place 
if only he will not convey the idea that he despises it. 
It is useless to deny that the scholars have failed often- 
times — less of late — to improve their opportunity ; and 
if ever the republic goes to the bad, it will be, not be- 
cause the illiterate and lax have seized and depraved it, 
but because the instructed and trained have neglected it. 

To me it seems axiomatic that the educated and virtu- 
ous, in a free state, can control it if they will. Here we 
are at the threshold of these great economic questions of 
labor, of capital, of currency. They affect the very 
tables and hearthstones and muscles of us all. We have 

NO 



220 FOURTH OF JULY. 

yet to solve the problem of so distributing tbe excess of 
the grain of the world that no man shall be unable to 
fairly exchange his product for it ; of so distributing the 
excess of wealth that no man shall be destitute who is 
willing to work. There will be fewer frauds upon the 
revenue as commerce is gradually relieved from its re- 
straints. Defalcations will be rare when the proper chan- 
nels for capital are alone open and the eddies and cata- 
racts of baseless speculation are avoided. There will be 
no terrorism of strikes when labor is directed aright and 
its wages are its honest measure. There will be no 
bubbles to burst, no corners for the gamblers to work up, 
when the laws that regulate the carrying of the product 
to the consumer are learned, and the supply becomes a 
steady stream, flowing into and satisfying the demand. 
All these are the questions of the economy of the future. 
There lies before us a field which should make the heart 
of a true man glad as he sees approaching a century of 
peace, of wise economies, of amelioration for the masses, 
of opportunity for lifting all men to a happy and useful 
activity. So shall those who follow reap a grander har- 
vest than ours. It is God's earth, and He made it for 
His children. How the arts will educate and train 
them ; how science will enlighten them ; how great moral 
strides will take them to loftier planes of conduct and 
life ! There can be no failure of the republic among an 
intelligent people, with schools for the young, with good 
examples in the past, with Christian ideals for the future. 
It has already surmounted its most stupendous risks and 
assaults. It has ridden them all safely over. The late 
civil war will only cement the structure. I am told that 
on the battlefields of Virginia, so swift is time's eras- 
ure, where, now seventeen years ago, the land was rough 



FOURTH OF JULY. 221 

with the intrenchments of the camp, already new woody 
growths have covered them over, and the foliage and the 
turf and the fruitful farms bear no mark of war, but 
wave with lines of beauty and of harvest. So be it, too, 
in the nation at large ! The contest is over ; the wrong 
is righted ; the curse is off ; the land is redeemed ; the 
sweet angels of peace and reconciliation are flitting from 
door to door, sitting at the tents, inspiring kinder 
thoughts and sympathies, and awakening at this very 
hour the ancient memories of a common sacrifice and a 
common glory. The great prolific fields of the South, its 
rivers and natural resources, saved from the blight of 
slavery, will be the loom and granary and wealth of us 
all. The softening influences of a common interest will 
draw together the people of all sections. Commerce and 
trade and learning, and all the affiliations that interweave 
the affections of a people, will surround and sustain the 
central pillar of a common country and destiny. 

I am now the hundreth in that succession with whom 
Boston has charged her Fourth of July orations. Our 
beloved country is more than a hundred years old. A 
century has come and has gone. It is indeed but as a 
day ; yet what a day ! Not the short and sullen day of 
the winter solstice, but the long, glorious, and prolific 
summer day of June. It rose in the twilight glimmerings 
of the dawn of Lexington, and its rays, falling on the 
mingled dew and gore of that greensward, and a little 
later across the rebel gun-barrels of Bunker Hill, and then 
tenderly lingering on the dead, upturned face of Warren, 
broke in the full splendor of the first Fourth of July, and 
lay warm upon the bell in the tower of Independence 
Hall, as it rang out upon the air the cry of a free nation 
newly born. Its morning sun, now radiant and now ob- 



222 FOURTH OF JULY. 

scnred, shone over the battlefields of the Eevolution, over 
the ice of the Delaware, and over the ramparts at York- 
town swept by the onslaught of the chivalrous Lafayette. 
It looked down upon the calm figure of Washington in- 
augurating the new government under the Constitution. 
It saw the slow but steady consolidation of the Union. 
It saw the marvelous stride with which, in the early years 
of the present century, the republic grew in wealth and 
population, sending its ships into every sea, and its pio- 
neers into the wilds of the Oregon and to the lakes of the 
North. It burst through the clouds of the War of 1812, 
and saw the navy of the young nation triumph in en- 
counters as romantic as those of armed knights in tour- 
nament. It heard the arguments of Madison, Hamil- 
ton, Marshal, Story, and Webster, determining the scope 
of the Constitution, and establishing forever the theory of 
its powers and restrictions. It beheld the overthrow of 
the delusion which regarded the United States as a league 
and not a nation, and that would have sapped it with the 
poison of nullification and secession. It saw an era of 
literature begin, distinguished by the stately achievements 
of the historian, the thought of the j^hilosopher, the grace 
of oratory, the sweet pure verse of the American poets, — 
poets of nature and the heart. It brought the tender 
ministry of unconsciousness to human pain. It caught 
the song of machinery, the thunder of the locomotive, 
the first click of the telegraph. It saw the measureless 
West unfold its prairies into great activities of life and 
product and wealth. It saw the virtue and culture and 
thrift of New England flow broad across the Mississippi, 
over the Rocky Mountains, and down the Pacific slope, 
expanding into a civilization so magnificent that its power 
and grandeur and influence to-day overshadow indeed the 



FOURTH OF JULY. 223 

fount from which they sprang. It saw America, first 
wrenching liberty for itself from the hand of European 
tyranny, share it free as the air with the oppressed and 
cramped peoples of Europe, carrying food to them in 
their starvation, offering them an asylum, welcoming their 
cooperation in the development and enjoyment of the 
generous culture and freedom and opportunity of the New 
World, and setting them, from the first even till now, an 
example of free institutions and local popular government, 
which every intelligent and self-respecting people must 
follow. Its afternoon was indeed overcast with shameful 
assault made on an unoffending neighbor to strengthen 
the hold of slavery upon the misguided interests of the 
country ; and there came the fiery tempest of civil war : 
the heart of the nation mourned the slaughter of its 
patriots, and the treason and folly of its children of the 
South, yet welcomed them back to their place in the 
family circle. And now eventide has come ; the storm is 
over ; the long day has drawn to its close in the magnifi- 
cent irradiation that betokens a glorious morning. We 
gather at our thresholds and hold sweet neighborly con- 
verse. Our children are about us in pleasant homes ; our 
flocks are safe ; our fields are ripening with the harvest. 
We recall the day, and pray that the God of the pilgrim 
and the patriot will make the morrow of our republic 
even brighter and better. May it indeed be the land 
of the free, — the land of education and virtue, in which 
there shall be none ignorant or depraved, none outside 
the pale of the influence and sympathy of the best, and 
therefore no swift or slow declension to corruption and 
death, no decline or fall for the future historian to write. 



